Saturday Night Live / Tropes Q to Z

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Q-R

• Quirky Ukulele: Parodied in the segment "Being Quirky with Zooey Deschanel", which spoofs Deschanel (played by Abby Elliot)'s spacey brand of "quirky". She's playing a ukulele in the theme song.
• Raging Stiffie: A sketch about the high school walkout protests of 2018 has John Mulaney as a student who makes the mistake of wearing the wrong kind of pants, giving him problems just getting out from behind that desk, just because one of the girls touched his shoulder encouragingly. Not helping things is one female teacher who leans right into his face to question his commitment to the cause, after which...
  "Well, it took care of itself the other way. Let's go!"
• Rambling Old Man Monologue: James Austin Johnson's take on Trump, who's incapable of staying on topic and drones on in long Trump-style complaints, one seguing into the next, about everything but the subject at hand, until he just barely manages to loop back around and tie it all together at the end.^note Johnson has stated for the record that he thinks the impression lands better if he never brings up politics (and because the real Trump already has that covered, which can be more uncomfortable than amusing for many audiences); his first variation on the character was Trump complaining about a dragon terrorizing the countryside, and his viral sketches were about Trump having opinions on pop culture like Scooby-Doo, LEGO, and 100 Gecs.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Parodied (of all things) in a 2017 sketch with The Rock, where Mad Scientists are competing to build the "World's Most Evil Invention". While other scientists have built shrink rays and freeze rays to use for Cartoonish Supervillainy, such as stealing or destroying world monuments, entrant Roy (The Rock) has built a "child-molesting robot" that horrifies all of the evil villains present who want him kicked out since Even Evil Has Standards, only for Roy to calmly point out that being Eviler than Thou was supposedly the whole point of the competition and that if anything the other contestants are slacking. The sketch culminates in the revelation that the whole thing is a commercial for White Castle.
• Real After All: A Christmas sketch from the Ryan Gosling episode has Ryan and Vanessa Bayer as a couple at a Christmas party that eventually reveal themselves to be a dangerously unhinged, Natural Born Killers style couple that practically take everyone hostage when the host implies Santa isn't real. Someone is forced to dress up as Santa to pacify them, and the woman insists on sitting on Santa's lap... in the style of a lapdance. The final shot implies that not only is Santa real, he's thoroughly spooked.
• Reboot Snark:
  • One sketch parodies the Disney Live-Action Remakes with an edgy live-action reboot of Bambi, with host Dwayne Johnson as the titular deer, updated to be gruff, buff, and loaded with pistols to get revenge on his mother's hunters. Vin Diesel is cast as Thumper and Tyrese Gibson is Flower.
  • One of the John Mulaney episodes promotes the most recent sitcom to be rebooted, the in-universe sitcom Switcheroo, about a "Freaky Friday" Flip between a son and a dad with a disturbing focus on the son getting trapped in sexual situations with the mom. The reboot apparently doesn't do much to update itself, other than showing a newspaper that says "Trump is President" and then having the mom switch bodies with the dog.
  • The Ariana DeBose episode takes aim at parent company NBC's Darker and Edgier reboot of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Bel-Air, by creating a Parody Commercial for Urkel, a Darker and Edgier reboot of Family Matters. The narrator introduces the "cast" with "The goofy characters you loved in the '90s with absolutely none of the fun or the charm."
    Narrator: Rolling Stone raves, "Family Matters is the #1 worst choice for a sitcom to modernize like this."
• Reclining Venus: Parodied in the Digital Short "Everyone's a Critic", when Andy Samberg and Paul Rudd paint nude portraits of each other in the Reclining Venus position and try to sell them at an art auction. The only problem is that anyone who looks at the resulting work is driven to violent, suicidal hysteria if the internal hemorrhaging does not kill them first.
• Recruiters Always Lie: One parody commercial depicts the Navy Experience as a tad more mundane than the real ads would lead you to believe.
  It's not just a job. It's $96.78 a week.
• Recurring Extra: The show often uses writers and production staff as extras in sketches. The show's "all hands on deck" mentality was more prevalent in its early days, but these days, SNL will use writers as honorary cast members, often if the monologue involves the celebrity host to interact with audience members (mostly the Q&A sessions where a celebrity fields questions from fans) or other sketches where they have more roles than cast members or need some background people if the sketch takes place somewhere where there is a high number of people (restaurants, busy streets, Congressional hearings, press conferences, classrooms, hospital waiting rooms, stores, etc). SNL's choreographer Danielle Flora has appeared as a recurring extra in sketches (often ones that are big musical numbers and they need dancers).
• Reluctant Gift: In an episode from late 1992/early 1993, Barbara Bush is showing Hillary Rodham Clinton around the White House, but is reluctant to let go of the precious antiques and such that stay with the house.
• Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated:
  • Paul McCartney informed Chris Farley that "I wasn't really dead."
  • Inverted in this Saturday Night Live segment from 2001 in which Lou Reed appeared on "Weekend Update" to confront rumors that he was dead. Reed confirmed that yes, he really was dead.
• Retraux: "A Lady's Guide to Throwing a Party", from the January Jones episode in 2009, is shot in the style of an old educational film.
• The Reveal: Much of season 42 had Steve Bannon represented as a hooded Grim Reaper-like character despite the show usually doing faithful representations of appearance and clothing. In season 43 it's finally revealed that under the black robe is a very accurately made-up and clothed Bill Murray.
• Ridiculous Exchange Rates: In season 47's parody of Squid Game, the 45.6 billion won prize money works up to about US$400.^note The phone calculating the difference has the original figure at 4 billion by mistake. Also the value should actually be US$38.8 million.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: One sketch features Dana Carvey as a psychic who is never wrong competing on a quiz show and builds an early lead by giving all the answers before the host can ask the questions. Then he gets stuck because he keeps getting premonitions about a meteor and it's not the answer to any of the questions. It then turns out the meteor he was seeing wasn't the answer to a question; it was actually a warning that a meteor was about to strike the show's set. The other contestant gets knocked out when it lands and the psychic wins by default.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: A sketch from 2015 parodied Disney's then-recent trend of remaking their animated movies in live action by reimagining Bambi as one. Dwayne Johnson (the episode's host) played the title character going after the hunters who killed his mother.
• Romance on the Set: invokedParodied with Leslie Jones and Kyle Mooney throughout Season 42, starting in the Dave Chapelle episode, where they begin dating. There are numerous callbacks and references to their "relationship" during the season, and by the end of the season they're married, have a kid together named "Little Lorne" and Kyle ends up in a love triangle between Leslie and Colin Jost.
• Rule of Drama: Averted for laughs in the Forgotten TV Gems soap opera spoof "Supportive Women", in which all the women were consistently nice to each other and all drama was thereby averted. As host Reese De' What (Kenan Thompson) observed, "Viewers tunes in in whatever the opposite of droves is."
• Running Gag: Generally specific to individual performers; some guest hosts have appeared so often that they've developed their own.
  • One particular gag was running roller captions over a bit. Done twice during Garrett Morris' songs ("An Die Musik", on Garrett's surprising song choice, and "Danny Boy", supposedly written by Morris himself in response), and twice during Buck Henry's monologues (one on how he was hired out of pity, and another on how he was brought back because the writers didn't need to work very hard for him).
  • Whenever a sketch takes place backstage, there are usually a bunch of showgirls, a llama, and a man dressed as Abraham Lincoln hanging out.
  • During the second half of Tim Meadows' tenure, there would inevitably be a joke regarding his Long Runner status whenever one of his old cast-mates came back to host the show.
  • From "Celebrity Jeopardy", "Potent Potables", the category that nobody ever picks (at least until the 40th Anniversary special). The "Black Jeopardy" equivalent is "White People".
  • A more recent one is the "Five-Timers Club", comprised of everyone who's reached their fifth hosting stint on SNL, and gets awarded a cigar and smoking jacket with a golden 5 on it. There may even be a Broadway-esque dance number.
  • During the Colin Jost/Michael Che iteration of "Weekend Update", the two have an annual Christmas tradition where they will end the segment with them telling jokes that were written for them by the other that they are now reading for the first time. Michael tends to write jokes for Colin that are incredibly racist, while Colin's jokes will most likely make Michael sound like a sexual deviant.
  • And of course, Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.

S

• Santa's Sweatshop: In a parody of the play Glengarry Glen Ross, a higher-up elf played by Alec Baldwin (who is a Captain Ersatz of the salesman played by him in its film adaptation) comes in to harshly criticize some workshop elves after they complain about the inferior tools they are using and reminding them to "always be cobbling," a parody of the line in the play "always be closing".
• Sarcasm Mode:
  • Seth Meyers on Weekend Update every other line:
    (re: Justin Bieber's mugshot) "Well THIS looks like the face of a man who's learned his lesson!"
  • Michael Che's style of handling Weekend Update is two-thirds this and one-third N-Word Privileges. Sometimes both at once.
    Colin: A merit-based system is contrary to the ideals of America. My Irish ancestors didn't come to America because they were the best and the brightest; they came here because God took their potatoes away.
    Michael: At least they had a choice. President Trump said... (Beat due to massive audience reaction)
• Satan Is Good: A recurring bit on "Weekend Update" has The Devil (played by Jason Sudeikis, not Jon Lovitz) invited on to comment on something heinous in the news, only for him to be appalled when he hears the act described and disavow having any part in it.
• Satellite Character: Certain recurring characters are designed expressly as an add-on to the Special Guest.
  • Cecily Strong as the English Brainless Beauty Gemma, who's the girlfriend of many past hosts from Dwayne Johnson to Benedict Cumberbatch. This even extends to Kenan Thompson and Vanessa Bayer, who play the old friend of Gemma's boyfriend regardless of who it is and his wife. (Lampshaded in season 46, sometime after Bayer left the show, with her character officially Put on a Bus.)
  • Fred Armisen as Regine, the pretentious and overly-reactive girlfriend to Daniel Craig, Jason Sudeikis and several others, is a classic one.
  • Dana and Niff (Cecily and Bobby) are apparently followed to wherever they're working now by the unnervingly creepy Andrew (Taran Killam), who doesn't even get lines.
• Schmuck Bait: Win Who's On Top, and you get $600,000 and a choice: walk away or lose it all. Choose to lose it all, and, well...
• Schoolyard Bully All Grown Up:
  • From Weekend Update, Riblet (played by Bobby Moynihan), Michael Che's old classmate who's Pretty Fly for a White Guy (very distinctly Italian-American too), and constantly ribbing Michael about taking his "jorb", thus coming across as this.
  • One sketch has Ryan Gosling As Himself who's in the middle of an interview when he comes across the guy who harassed him in school. The "grown up" part is debatable though.
  • A sketch in season 49 is about host Shane Gillis at his high school reunion, who used to be a bully but made good for himself by becoming a night club owner, and is pretty successful compared to all the people he knew - except the guy he bullied, Forrest Gump.
• The Scottish Trope: Season 36 covers the problems with Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, which producer Julie Taymer (Kristen Wiig) attributes to the two prop department heads being named Mac and Beth.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: At the end of the "High School Theater Show" sketch with Reese Witherspoon, Leslie Jones' character leaves the cringey show during intermission because she'd rather go home and watch Judge Judy.
• Secret Word: A recurring joke in the show was the segment "Secret Word" in which two contestants in a game show had to guess hidden words based on clues from their celebrity partners.
• Self-Deprecation:
  • One Rita Delvecchio sketch centers on her as she gives out candy to trick or treaters on Halloween. When two kids show up as the Spartan cheerleaders (Cheri Oteri of course being the portrayer of both Rita and Arianna the female Spartan), Rita complains, "If I see that freakin’ skit one more time, I’m gonna put my foot through the TV."
  • During their music video "That's When You Break" that aired during the 40th Anniversary special, Andy Samberg mentions he and Adam Sandler "made a movie that bombed!"
  Sandler: (not singing) Why would you bring that up?
  • In the Chance the Rapper/Eminem episode, when Colin reports on Al Franken forcing a woman to kiss him for a sketch comedy sketch for Afghanistan:
  Colin: Come on, the troops in Afghanistan have it bad enough without you forcing them to watch sketch comedy. People can barely stay awake to watch sketches after "Weekend Update."
  • The Jason Bateman/Morgan Wallen episode features a sketch that mocks the incident in October 2020 where Wallen was dropped as the show's musical guest after being caught on social media violating COVID protocols with Wallen playing himself and owning up to his poor decision making.
  • The Benedict Cumberbatch/Arcade Fire episode has a sketch where it's revealed Chloe Fineman is the show's understudy for the other female cast members and she's shown doing impressions of most of them:
  Sarah Sherman: Wait, do I sound like a Jewish parrot?
  • The Cold Open for the Season 48 is filled with this, as the sketch centers around a fake "ManningCast" with Peyton (host Miles Teller) and Eli (Andrew Dismukes) watching the season's first sketch and the two of them mocking several of show's conventions over the last few seasons (over-relying on Kate McKinnon, continuing to mock Donald Trump even though Joe Biden is now the president, Stunt Casting celebrities for politicians, etc.)
  • The NFL Championship Sunday sketch from the Dakota Johnson/Justin Timberlake episode has all of the NFL on CBS commentators lament the end of the football season for various reasons, with Bill Cowher (Mikey Day) pointing out football is the only thing most of America's population stills watches on TV:
  James Brown (Kenan Thompson): Especially live! There's no other live TV that is even remotely watchable!
• Serial Escalation: The Sean Spicer segments from season 42 has Melissa McCarthy (as Spicer) doing crazier things every skit. In her first Spicer appearance, she picks up the press secretary podium and swings it at the reporters; in the following episode's cold open, she drives the podium into the reporter pool; and in Spicey's final appearance, she drives through the streets of New York on the podium.
• Series Fauxnale:
  • The last episode of season five hosted by Buck Henry with musical guests Andrew Gold, Andrae Crouch, and Voices of Unity. It even ended with the remnants of the original "Not Ready for Primetime" cast running out of the studio as the "ON AIR" light flashed off for (what seemed like it would be) the final time.
  • ...Then along came NBC's decision to continue the show, which, at first with Jean Doumanian and her cast (save for Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo), was a bad idea. The last Doumanian-produced episode hosted by Bill Murray was also written as the last one...until Dick Ebersol stepped in as Doumanian's replacement.
  • The last episode of season 11 (hosted by Anjelica Huston and Billy Martin with musical guest George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic) was written as the series finale as well, due to the low ratings and terrible reviews the show had gotten during the season. The final scene had everyone in the cast (except for Jon Lovitz) locked in a room that Lorne had set on fire. When the show was given a second chance at life, the final scene (and everything about season 11) was written off as All Just a Dream ("...a horrible, horrible dream").
  • The last episode of season 20 (hosted by David Duchovny), much like season 11, had a large majority of cast members killed off (as seen in the "Beastman" cold opening and the last sketch where the popular male cast members all throw themselves in a polar bear cage exhibit at the zoo).
• Serious Business:
  • The guy who ruins an otherwise perfect dinner with his future in-laws because he gets very intense on the subject of Shrek being the best animated film ever made.
  • In another sketch characters played by Matt Damon and Leslie Jones ruin a holiday dinner by fighting over old or new Weezer is better.
• Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll: One Behind the Music parody had Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids recount how the wealth and fame of being pop stars was too much to handle and several of them got into drugs. Mushmouth took crystal meth and "bitba Steve Rubellba's thumba offba" and a security camera clip is shown of Dumb Donald going crazy in a hotel room, threatening a pair of prostitutes, and claiming to be Superman.
• Shameful Source of Knowledge: From a Weekend Update segment on January 25, 2014:
  "An 18-year-old high-school student in Florida, who was suspended after school officials learned that he was starring in adult films, has been allowed to return to classes. School officials are also stressing that the way they found out the student was starring in adult films 'is not important.'"
• Share Phrase: It would probably be easier to list the cast regulars and hosts who haven't gotten to deliver "Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!" than those who have.
• She Is All Grown Up: The Janelle sketches headlined by Sasheer Zamata. Apparently Janelle's online live cam show still uses the same title card she had about six years ago, showing her in Nerd Glasses, braces and Nickelodeon-worthy braids, but then the show starts and Janelle turns out to be... well... Sasheer Zamata.
• Shmuck Bait: One question in "Black Jeopardy" that should resonate across all races:
  Kenan: The answer is "Your barber says there's a two-hour wait, but there's an empty seat up front".
  Chris: What is "aw HELL naw, there's a good reason your chair's empty!"
  Kenan: Correct!... You could come out looking like The Weeknd.
• Shoo the Dog: Played for laughs inthe "Tiny Horse" sketch with Timothée Chalamet — Tim breaks out his A-lister acting chops as a boy whose parents have to sell the farm, forcing him to shoo the tiny horse away forever. It's a tiny horse. They could have kept it in a drawer.
• Shooting Gallery: Parodied in a sketch, where in between the typical criminals and civilians, a man in an 80s business suit named Kevin Roberts (played by Larry David), who inexplicably has a storyline, pops up, which confuses the rookie FBI agents going through the gallery.
• Shoot the Television: On the Weekend Update airing just after the inauguration of Donald Trump:
  Michael Che: Welp, after Friday all of America had to go out and buy a new TV. (inset shows a smashed tv still showing said inauguration)
• Shout-Out: Kate McKinnon as Rudolf Giuliani holds her hands before her chest with her fingers splayed out, in exactly the same manner that Max Schreck held his fingers in Nosferatu.
• Shown Their Work:
  • Fred Armisen always researches those elaborate street directions in "The Californians" to get them right.
  • The spoof of Batman in season 43 repeatedly mentions petty criminals being dangled by wires from gargoyles, cementing this Batman as the Arkham games version.
  • According to a comment by a former car dealership employee on the "December To Remember" sketch from Christmas 2020, many versions of the scenario have happened in Real Life.
  • The titles of various true crime and cult documentaries shown throughout Season 46’s "Murder Show" are all real. The ones in the lyrics however, are fictional.
  • Season 48 has a parody of the American Girl dolls that has six of the official Historical Characters including the original three.
  • Some comments about the "Women's AA Meeting" sketch in season 49 are about how the apparently random collection of demographics seen, from millenials to housewives to Ego Nwodim in a white collar power suit, are actually commonplace in AA meetings.
• Sickeningly Sweethearts:
  • Morning Joe's Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski (Alex Moffat and Kate McKinnon), with reaction shots of any guests for effect.
  • Deconstructed with Nico Slobkin (Mikey Day) and Brie Bacardi (Heidi Gardner) a photogenic Instagram couple who break into a horrible on-air fight at the drop of a hat.
• Signature Transition:
  • The iconic transition between the end of the opening skit and the opening credits is the host breaking character to yell "Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!"
  • In both the Wayne's World films and SNL sketches, Wayne and Garth would initiate a flashback or fantasy sequence by waving their arms and saying "dillilu" several times, which would result in a wavy transition.
• Sitcom Archnemesis: On almost every skit parodying celebrity Jeopardy involving Sean Connery, Sean Connery constantly makes fun of Trebek and goes out of his way to try to pick fights with him. While this is mostly one-sided, as Trebek just seems to want to get the show over with, Trebek is at the very least really put-out by Connery's antics. In spite of the professional front he puts up, Connery is clearly getting under Trebek's skin.
• Sketch Comedy: Not the first of its kind, but definitely one of the most popular.
• Sleeping Single: Invoked by Bea in "Dream Home Cousins" (April 9, 2022). It was her idea to replace the king bed with three single beds for her son and his wife when designing the house.
• Sluggish Sloths: One sketch subverted this. A zookeeper introduces a video made by high school students to teach people more about sloths. The video is a heavy metal video depicting sloths as raucous party animals and violent hoodlums. After the video, the zookeeper says "That's not entirely accurate."
• Smelly Skunk: In the Daniel Kaluuya / St. Vincent episode, Kate McKinnon plays Pepé Le Pew who sprays Matt Gaetz with his stench. Gaetz actually likes it a bit.
• So Beautiful, It's a Curse: Played for Laughs, of course, on the "Sharon Stone/Pearl Jam" episode (Season 17, Episode 17, original airdate April 11, 1992). Sharon's character is sitting at a bar and guys are walking up to her and being utterly terrified to speak to her, with Jon Lovitz' character being the only one brave enough to actually sit down and talk to her.
• Soapbox Sadie: The "High School Theatre" sketch involves a production delivered by a group of high school students who have clearly just recently discovered both the concept of avant garde and various issues such as climate change, homophobia, transgender, and so forth, and as a result behave as though they personally invented them. The resulting production is a series of skits that are the worst combination of insufferably self-righteous, poorly informed and utterly pretentious, which their long-suffering parents are forced to endure while snarking and complaining from the audience.
  • In one "Woodbridge High School Experimental Theater" sketch, the Soapbox Sadie performers all in unison repeatedly chant "Who runs the world? Whites." While this is presumably supposed to be a searing indictment of white privilege, one of the parents points out that, since all the performers happen to be white, this has the unintended effect of making it seem like they're just bragging.
• Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome: Played for Laughs with the recurring Leslie Jones and Kyle Mooney relationship storyline — they somehow have a son who's grown to the age of 6 during season 42, and by season 43 he's old enough to go to college (and played by surprise guest Jay Pharoah!)
• Soap Punishment: Sean Spicer as played by Melissa McCarthy attacked a reporter with a Super Soaker full of soap water to wash out his "filthy lying mouth".
• Southies: Boston natives Casey Affleck and Bill Burr play rowdy Southies as foils to the clean cut and cultured "Real Bostonians" in the Dunkin' Donuts and Sam Adams commercial parodies, respectively.
• Species Subversives: an In-Universe example. A zookeeper introduces a video made by high school students to educate people on sloths. The video features a heavy metal song depicting sloths (normally very lazy animals) as rabble rousing party maniacs. When it finishes, the zookeeper says "That's not entirely accurate."
• Speed Sex: One musical number is done as a "sequel" to the classic "Baby It's Cold Outside", with a Time Skip of 12 minutes.
• Spin-Off: SNL Korea, a localized Korean version, is practically a carbon copy of the original, right down to the use of the Grand Central-inspired set for the host monologue. The only real difference is that, because Korean cable shows only have one brief commercial break, the audience gets to watch what happens backstage as the cast and crew reset for a new sketch.
• Spiritual Successor: Certain recurring skits feel like successors to older recurring skits; Bill Hader's "Vincent Price's holiday special" is about Vincent Price having to wrangle Cloudcuckoolander celebrities into putting on a good show, just like Will Ferrell as Alex Trebek in Celebrity Jeopardy.
• Spoofed with Their Own Words: The famous skit about Sarah Palin during the 2008 U.S. presidential race. It very intentionally consisted almost entirely of actual Palin lines from her interview with Katie Couric. A couple of judicious additions and Tina Fey's delivery were all it took.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad:
  • With Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi gone by the fifth season, it was left to Bill Murray to carry most of the workload (and Gilda Radner to an extent).
  • Eddie Murphy was this during the early '80s, to the point where he became the first person to host while still a castmember. This did not go over with his fellow castmates, especially when he opened with "Live from New York, it's The Eddie Murphy Show".
  • By the late 2010s, the show has pretty much become "The Kate McKinnon Show" after her rise to fame for her portrayal of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election. She usually gets a round of applause just from arriving on stage mid-sketch, and during the Trump administration frequently cross dressed so she could play a male member of Trump's cabinet (usually playing Co-Dragons with Beck Bennett's Mike Pence even when the actual person she played wasn't anywhere near that) and be able to headline the cold opens^note the trend started when she played Jeff Sessions to mock Trump's dislike of the show's portrayal of Sean Spicer, but Kate's comments during the 2020-2021 season suggest she frequently crossdresses as a hobby and escapist technique anyway, so best of both worlds for her!.
• Staging an Intervention: In a Weekend Update segment.
  Seth Meyers: NBC announced that Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb will host a primetime special on the network called A Toast to 2013 in which they recount their favorite stories from the past year. But [whispering behind his hand] shh, it's actually an intervention.
• The Starscream: When Beck Bennet plays Vice President Mike Pence, many of his jokes seem to come down to him just biding his time until he can take office, such as this excerpt from a dialogue with Kate McKinnon as Attorney General Jeff Sessions:
  Sessions: What're we going to do, Mike?
  Pence: The important thing is to stay calm. In a couple months, the president will be back to normal.
  Sessions: *incredulously* How's that?
  Pence: Because it will be me.
• Straight Gay: Seth Meyers is revealed to be this, after stopping Stefon's wedding and claiming Stefon for himself.
• Stealth Pun: Season 44 has a Game of Thrones parody with the odd casting choice of Pete Davidson as the (much older) High Sparrow. Pete has famously been on marijuana, which would make him a different sort of High Sparrow.
• Stepford Smiler: Downplayed and implied with Kristen Wiig's mom character in "Christmas Morning"- "It hurt so bad, but I didn't even scream, 'cause I keep the pain inside of me!"
• Stepford Suburbia: A recurring plot element involves a gathering of suburban housewives that eventually leads to this disturbing reveal about their reality, barring a certain level of ridiculousness. One episode has Brie Larson as the new one in a neighborhood where all the women already have the same 90s-style "soft waterfall in the front but knives in the back" hairdo... and not by choice.
• Stimulant Speedtalk: The digital short "Great Day" by The Lonely Island features Andy Samberg as a man who emerges from his trashed house with a telltale white smear below his nose. He sings about his optimism despite losing his job and his marriage, and then pauses to snort more cocaine, which makes the song speed up into double time. His ramblings include moving to Spain, curing all diseases, and living in The Matrix.
• Straight Man and Wise Guy: Alex Trebek and Sean Connery from the "Celebrity Jeopardy" sketches. Trebek tries to host a normal game show while Connery makes jokes about Trebek's mother.
• Stuff Blowing Up: The Christina Applegate episode of season 38 has a sketch about the legend of Odysseus, where the sirens successfully get the ship to crash against the rocks... and explode.
• Stuffy Old Songs About the Buttocks:
  • Deliberately parodied with "Dongs All Over the World".
  • One sketch is about the funeral of a man who dabbled in hip-hop songwriting despite being incredibly white. One song is actually titled "This Is My Butt".
  • John Goodman and Kenan Thompson sing a soul tune called "All I Want for Christmas is Booty" during the monologue.
  • Played for Laughs in season 44, with a music video about what happens when Political Overcorrectness hits.
    Shake that booty (If you wanna!) Shake that booty! (It's your choice!)
    We all wanna touch your booty but we will respect your voice!
• Stylistic Suck:
  • One sketch had to be written in a hurry by Beck Bennet and Kyle Mooney due to taking place at the weekend after Day Without Women. Looks ok at first, but then the dialogue suffers badly before going deliberately anvilicious.
  • The Woodbridge High School Experimental Theatre sketches, in which the skits performed by the students are the worst combination of self-righteous, poorly-informed, pretentious and, well, rubbish.
• Subverted Kids' Show: Many a skit have featured this, with the most notable being Mr. Bill, a clay feature getting tormented by Mr. Sluggo and denied help by his "friend" Mr. Hands, as well as Eddie Murphy's parody of Gumby as a drinking and smoking cynic and Mr. Robinson, an inner-city parody of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.
• Subverted Sitcom: A sketch featured host John Mulaney as the creator of a 1980s sitcom called Switcheroo, which seems to be a typical "Freaky Friday" Flip comedy about a boy and dad switching bodies and trying to hide the secret from the mom. Then we see more clips of the sitcom, which put more and more focus on how the boy has sex with the mom while in the dad's body. The interviewer gets creeped out talking about the series, but the creator nonchalantly defends his decision to focus so heavily on the sexual implications of this premise (while also revealing some disturbing childhood facts). The creator mentions an episode in the reboot where the dog and the mom switch bodies while implying similar gross things, as well as an upcoming crossover with Dateline. Needless to say, the sitcom wasn't popular in-universe and the cast members are all in group therapy (except for the son, "little Andy Cunanan" who left the business).
• Suck Out the Poison: One sketch parodies Indiana Jones, with Special Guest Dwayne Johnson as the hero who keeps making the sidekick (Pete Davidson) suck out the poison every time they're hit by venom darts, leading to a jarring case of Stay in the Kitchen when they keep preventing the beautiful professor played by Kate Mckinnon from doing it, as much as she really, really wants to.
• Suddenly Shouting:
  • From the season 39 premiere, a mock game show called "New Cast Member or Arcade Fire" where Special Guest Tina Fey has to figure out which of the people brought before her is a new addition to the show or the musical guest that week. For some reason Kenan Thompson as the game show host turns downright hostile any time the new members start fangirling over Tina.
    Kenan: "HEY!! NO LINES!! You get NO LINES! That's something you gotta EARN!!"
  • From Weekend Update:
    Cecily: A river in Scotland was accidentally flooded with whiskey when a bottling plant accidentally released more than 1700 gallons of liquor. Said one fish (terrible Scottish accent) 'YEW DON'T KNOW MEH!'"
    (whole scene grinds to a halt as Seth and Cecily both start laughing)
  • Leslie Jones pulls this off like a boss:
    "I want a guys who likes flowers. But don't send me flowers. Cos I DON'T like flowers. Cos they stink of DEATH! COS YOU CUT 'EM UP AND THEY DEAD!! I GOT A BAG FULL OF ROTTING GARBAGE DEAD FLOWERS!! A BAG FULL OF DEATH!!"
    (frame out to Colin Jost looking completely stupefied)
• Sunroof Shenanigans: The "Prom Limo" sketch has some drunken high schoolers standing up in a sunroof to try to banter with strangers and sing. Naturally, it ends with an overpass decapitation.
• Superpower Lottery: Played for Laughs with the spoof of Stranger Things, with Eleven (Natalie Portman) meeting up with a whole bunch of randomly numbered kids with all sorts of abilities and weaknesses. Cecily Strong is a '80s Hair-wearing teen who can read minds, causing her to fart.
• Surprise Party:
  • A recurring sketch is about a group of people planning a surprise [birthday/anniversary/retirement/etc.] party for one of their friends, and Kristen Wiig's character is so very very excited about it she just can't keep still — or keep her mouth shut when the character in question appears.
  • Jeremy Irons's guest appearance featured a skit in which Sherlock Holmes' friends try to throw a surprise party for him. Turns out they can't surprise the clever Holmes with anything!
  • A Christmas-related sketch from Season 13 has the Apostles giving Jesus a surprise birthday party, but they have a hard time being able to surprise him.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Despite being a comedy show, this is frequently played out in its skits and commercial parodies:
  • One sketch features a send-up of High School Musical as Troy (Zac Efron) has to break it to a graduating class of East High that if you try breaking out into song in college, not only will no one join in, but people will treat you like a lunatic.
  • Likewise, some skits would have Norm Macdonald placed in Evita or West Side Story (1961) and baffled at people suddenly breaking into song. "What the hell was that?"
  • In a sketch parodying Peanuts, Lucy attempts the old Running Gag of pulling the football away when Charlie Brown (Brendan Fraser) tries to kick it, but when Charlie Brown lands, he cracks his skull open, and everyone gets angry with Lucy for causing him to be severely injured, and desperately trying to keep him to hang on until the paramedics arrive.
  • In one sketch, a military executive brings president George Washington (played by Russell Brand) into the present day using a secret military time machine in hopes that he could bring an end to the arguments over the founding fathers. While a tad exaggerated, considering he starts beating up everybody around him, Washington's reaction over being transported into another time period with no warning was fairly realistic as he questions where he is and who the people around him are out of fear.
  • Another skit parodies the famous scene from "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" where Grandpa Joe gets out of bed and starts singing when Charlie (played by Kristen Stewart) reveals he won the 5th Golden Ticket. Before Grandpa Joe can really get into the song, however, Charlie becomes absolutely befuddled that his grandfather could walk the entire time and had been essentially forcing Charlie to drop out of school to earn a living for the household while he had essentially been lounging around in bed all day. When Grandpa Joe tries to brush off Charlie's indignant and justified anger, Charlie makes it clear that he is not taking him to the Chocolate Factory and storms out of the room when his other grandpa and one of his grandmas revealed that they could walk also.
  • Another "Willy Wonka" themed skit introduces Willy's accountant brother Glen (Al Gore) who is yelling about how the factory is "hemorrhaging money" due to Willy's insistence on such things as a chocolate river, spending a billion dollars on a machine to simply change giant chocolate bars into smaller ones and the countless health code violations of having a pack of mysterious foreign helpers around as the staff (without green cards). When he hears Willy is about to hand control of the factory to an 8-year old boy, Glen hits the roof. Charlie meanwhile, decides he's going to go in for the profits and instructs Glen to start seeing about getting some cheap Mexican-made chocolate they can pass off as expensive.
  • The "Hero Song" sketch features Andy Samberg as a businessman singing about how he's distressed by crime in the city and donning a superhero cape and mask to clean up the streets. Until he finds a Damsel in Distress played by Amy Adams being menaced by a mook played by Jason Sudeikis. In mid-line, the singing hero takes a punch to the face, at which point the mook proceeds to beat the hero. Brutally. For over a minute.
  • In one of its commercial parodies, Undercover Office Potty, a man is provided with a lamp that doubles as a portable toilet so that he can use the bathroom in the office and continue working. A typical SNL bit would have his co-workers being blissfully unaware and his boss complimenting his increased work production, but instead, everyone immediately notices the stench and orders him to get rid of the lamps. When he tries the same thing with oversized office equipment, he gets the same result, culminating in his fed-up, horrified, and disgusted boss firing him.
  • As overkill as it ended up being for the sake of comedy, the famous sketch where Chris Farley plays a man that gets mad at finding out he was in a Product Switcheroo Ad do showcases the fact that people sometimes don't like being swindled like that. There's a reason why these kind of ads have been struggling recently, not the least of which is the fact that people who get pissed off can make it public as fast as they can place it on the Internet, like this example here can attest.
  • Two "Black Jeopardy" sketches (one with Drake as a Black-Canadian named Jared, the other with Chadwick Boseman as King T'Challa) have the characters played by the hosts perform poorly because, even though they have dark skin, they are natives of other countries and, thus, are completely unfamiliar with African-American culture.
  • The early-'90s recurring skit "The Denise Show" featured a teenage boy moping over his ex-girlfriend and doing whatever he could think of to get her back. Despite the comedy setting, it's made abundantly clear that Stalking is Love is not true—his father blasts him for his behavior, Denise herself repeatedly tells him to leave her alone, his new girlfriend dumps him because he won't get over her, and the final skit has him mentioning that a restraining order has been filed against him.
  • A sketch where a medieval hot oil scalder teaches his son how to perform the job during a siege of their castle has the scalder laugh as he recalls how he accidentally poured molten lead on his father's leg when he started out. His son asks what happened and the scalder replies in a serious tone that his father died as a result.
  • A "Stranger Things" skit has Mike, Lucas, and Dustin about to venture into the Upside Down only to be stopped by Lucas' parents, who noticed that their son has been missing for days. The adults chide the kids for being out late while kidnappers are roaming around, do not believe them about the Demogorgon and the Upside Down, and are not any more reassured by them getting supervised by Joyce(who went crazy from the disappearance of her son) and Chief Hopper (who they do not know and are uncomfortable with him calling the kids some of his closest friends). The skit ends with Lucas being taken home by his parents while they comment on the weirdness of the situation.
  • A parody of an enhancement drug ad starts out with a man, played by Dwayne Johnson, talking about the miracle of "xentrax", a drug recommended to him by his colleague that cures erectile dysfunction. However, when Johnson's character tries getting a prescription for xentrax, his bewildered doctor points out the dangers of the drug, calls out Johnson for taking sketchy medical advice and responsibly refuses to write a prescription that could lose him his medical license and get a patient killed. Unfortunately Johnson keeps aggressively persisting and beats the poor doctor up for all his troubles at the end of the skit.
  • A 2019 Christmastime Macy's commercial parody makes the point that children often find the cute Christmas outfits their parents buy and make them wear to family gatherings to be uncomfortable for a variety of reasons, and sometimes can't get out of them in time to go to the bathroom. In addition, those clothes can cause adults problems, like a marital couple's squabble over the father's inability to get a pair of boots on their daughter expanding into the father's reluctance to visit his in-laws because the inevitable family drama, and "onesies with so many buttons you'll keep them in a fully loaded diaper rather than have to take it off and put it on again".
  • A social distancing Santa's Workshop skit where Santa and Mrs. Claus talk to the kids through giant hamster balls ends in disaster when the two actors playing the respective characters keep falling over and hurting themselves in the unsecured balls and destroying the set, with Santa even sustaining a nose bleed. The family who came in at the beginning of the skit understandably refuse to let their daughter near those unsafe conditions.
  • In this parody of the ubiquitous "Buy A Car For Christmas" commercials, a man's wife is furious when he surprises her with a new Lexus, not just because he made such a large purchase without discussing it with her, but because they can't actually afford it. His neighbor is equally angry, as he loaned him the money for it in the belief that he needed it for emergency expenses.^note In the comments, a former Lexus dealership tech who said he often had to work on Christmas making these deliveries said the sketch was all the funnier for him as this had happened several times in real life.
  • One sketch centers around a fictional episode of The Muppet Show where, after Statler and Waldorf do their usual heckling, two security guards suddenly appear and tell them to stop disrupting the show. Then when the duo try to defend themselves by pointing out how bad the show is, the guards remind them no one is forcing them to be there and they can just leave.
  • One sketch has the citizens from a Gotham neighborhood up in arms because, despite being the town superhero, Batman keeps beating people up for random crimes like petty theft. Naturally, the people aren't happy that such minor offenses are met with such retaliation as broken jaws and getting dangled from a building for hours.
  • One sketch focuses on a city councilman (played by Oscar Isaac) explaining all the problems with the PAW Patrol being the only team of rescue workers in Adventure Bay, and how a group of talking dogs isn't a good replacement for actual cops and firefighters. In addition, the counselman questions the idea of Ryder, a ten-year-old boy, being in charge of the team, as a 911 call reveals he wasn't sure how to handle a man's girlfriend while she was suffering from an overdose.
  Councilman: Mayor Goodway, the numbers don't lie. 258 unsolved murders. 36 carjackings a day. 0 sex crime units in our police force because the PAW Patrol and their 10-year-old boss don't know what sex is!

T

• Take That!:
  • Michael Keaton on his episode of Celebrity Jeopardy!. When asked to write his favorite food in Final Jeopardy!, he responded with "Val Kilmer Sucks" and he wagered "George Clooney Sucks".
  • During the Weekend Update segment of the Ryan Gosling/Chris Stapleton episode in Season 49, anchor Michael Che commented on the upcoming WNBA draft that "The University of Iowa announced that basketball star Caitlin Clark will have her jersey retired and replaced with an apron." Cue the real Clark being introduced, followed by a Humiliation Conga of "Take That!"s...
    • First, Clark called out Che for his jokes on women's sports, which he tried to deny. Co-anchor Colin Jost immediately followed with a super-cut of Che's past jokes, finishing with "Unlike Che, I support women."
    • This was followed by Clark giving Che a list of jokes to read during the segment, each at his expense.
    • Finally, Clark pulled out an apron that she had previously autographed, and gave it to Che. After he said he would give it to his girlfriend; Clark fired back with "You don’t have a girlfriend, Michael."
• A Tankard of Moose Urine: The "Shaun Mondavi Vineyards" sketch, where Robert Mondavi's stepson tries to promote his own wine, which causes him to grimace and nearly vomit. It's eventually revealed to not be wine but a blend of tequila, Five Alive, mini marshmallows, fish and seawater.
• Teacher/Student Romance:
  • The Season 35 classroom sketch with Tina Fey and Justin Bieber. Deconstructed when the student (Bieber) catches wise to what his teacher is doing and threatens to sue her for sexual harassment.
  • A Season 32 sketch where episode host Annette Bening plays a teacher who's in love with an apathetic student (Andy Samberg) who doesn't realize that he's in a relationship with his teacher.
  • On the Josh Brolin/Gotye episode from Season 37, a drunk teacher (Brolin) during Booker T. Washington High's prom confessed that he's in a relationship with a student (played by Nasim Pedrad).
  • This sketch has one such case go to trial, where the real joke is that not only was it completely consensual considering both parties' attitude, but even the judge clearly approves.
    Student: She made the first move, sir... I went to her office and asked her "what can I do for extra credit?", and then it was on.
  • One sketch has Miley Cyrus as a completely detached emo student who only shows an interest in poetry just so she can get in front of the class and start snuggling up to the Hippie Teacher.
  • There's also Amy Schumer's teacher and her student in the porn parody sketch, who keep getting interrupted by a student (Aidy Bryant) who has actual school-related questions for the teacher.
• Test Kiss: In a the episode hosted by Gal Gadot two lesbians, Megan and Dre (played by Aidy Bryant and Kate McKinnon) sail to Themyscira (the home of Wonder Woman) expecting that the amazons living there will be all lesbians as well; they are severely disappointed when it turns out that none of them are. Diana eventually kisses Dre to see if they feel anything, but they don't.
• They Killed Kenny Again:
  • Mr. Bill, the little Play-Doh man who died a violent death in every sketch at the hands of...well, a giant pair of hands known as Mr. Hands!
  • Also Bobby Moynihan's character, Ass Dan, who, despite being dead since 2009, has been appearing in the Under Underground commercials alive and well, until they freeze-frame the shot and play funereal music as the caption: "Ass Dan 1981 — [whatever year he died. So far, he's died once in 2009, twice in 2010, twice in 2011, and once in 2012, so that's six times if you're keeping score at home].
  • Chad has died at least twice: in the haunted mansion sketch with Adele, and the Mars colonization sketch with Elon Musk.
• This Is Gonna Suck: In the "High School Theater Show" sketch with Reese Witherspoon, Leslie Jones' character notices one of the actors is planted in the audience and groans, "This is gonna suck."
• Those Two Guys:
  • Practically a SNL staple character-wise. Some of the historic pairings on the show's history include the Wild and Crazy Guys, the Butabi brothers, Wayne and Garth, Dyke and Fats, Donald Jr. and Eric Trump...
  • There's a bunch of behind-the-scenes clips (part of the 40th anniversary celebrations) depicting Beck Bennet and Kyle Mooney (both of whom joined at the same time in season 39) as this. It's taken to its logical conclusion in a "Leslie and Kyle Romance on the Set" sketch in season 43.invoked
  • Similarly, Kate Mckinnon and Aidy Bryant get paired up a lot even though they're the only ones most likely to break each other mid-sketch (and in Kate's case that says a lot). Just watch any of the "Mrs Rafferty" sketches, which involve Kate and Aidy sitting opposite each other from beginning to end.
  • To a lesser extent, Mikey Day and Alex Moffat, both of whom joined up at roughly the same time, but it wasn't till their roles as Donald Jr and Eric Trump that people started to take notice. Other famous duos they've been cast as include Prince Harry and William, and even Ernie and Bert! This was actually lampshaded during Scarlett Johansson's monologue when several cast members crumble into dust. Alex is one of the victims and Chris Redd mistakenly calls him Mikey. Ego Nwodim points this out, to which Chris replies "it's the same damn thing."
• Throwing Off the Disability: In the Christmas edition of "What's Up With That", one of the random characters added to the dance numbers is Tiny Tim (with Ebenezer Scrooge right behind), who drops his crutch and starts popping and locking like a boss.
• Title Sequence: One thing that SNL has been known to do, constantly, is to update the opening title sequence drastically (as well as the logo) from time to time, in order to look fresh. Only one thing has remained consistent in the sequences, which is that they always feature scenes of New York City locations and goings on,^note the exception is Season 23's opening, which did not feature New York at all either going about their business, showboating for the camera, or being a part of the sequence skits as they were in season 29. Even the Theme Tune has changed frequently, only starting in season 12 to have a more consistent melody to it (and starting in season 24 to also feature a sax solo halfway through that has extended itself over the years). It's also rather long, which, as this video demonstrates, allows for time to prepare the set.
• Tomato Surprise: One Christmas episode hosted by Amy Adams is about the Dundee sisters, a trio of attractive singing flappers in the '50s who turn out to be complete CloudCuckooLanders who are ready to eat garbage if they lose a bet (and are way too eager to). They're actually three raccoons, whose Christmas wish came true, giving them human form for one night.
• Too Dumb to Fool: Alex Moffat's depiction of Eric Trump uses this frequently, as when he's not struggling to understand how FunDip and fidget spinners work, he's often shooting very simple and innocent statements about his father that completely undermine his brother's (Mikey Day's) prior arguments. (Which also counts as Saying Too Much.)
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • A spoof of the upcoming Jersey Shore remake, Floribama Shore, set during Hurricane Irma. None of the occupants really take any precautions beyond staying indoors. The sketch ends with some debris being blown through a window and killing one of them.
  • Sam Rockwell appears as the presenter on a children's science show, with two kids brought on set to assist him. They could use some assistance of their own, putting it lightly.
  • Typically the game show spoofs will have someone like this among the contestants — in "Celebrity Jeopardy" it's usually all of them. Except Sean Connery, who's just being an arsehole.
• Took the Bad Film Seriouslyinvoked: In one sketch during the 2019 episode with Emma Stone as host, she played an actress who does this with her bit part on a gay porn shoot. Her "role" is simply being the wife who's cheated on by her husband with her godson, appearing only briefly twice (to leave, then come back and catch them together). However, she goes all out trying to connect with her character, imagining her entire backstory and is moved to tears at the end (though the director doesn't care at all, her fellow actors are impressed).
• Top Ten List:
  • Wayne's World would have some, including the Trope Namer for Why We Are Bummed Communism Fell.
  • Nat X would have a top 5 list because The Man wouldn't let him have any more.
• Transparent Closet: The daytime talkshow Right Side of the Bed with Gracelynn and Cory (Cecily Strong and Taran Killam respectively). They're supposed to be married, but then you notice the way Cory paws at Gracelynn like she was a guy...
  Special Guest Scarlett Johansson: (on the phone) I'm on that talk show with the gay guy and his mom!
• Trash the Set: Some SNL sketches do end with a character laying waste to the cheap, flimsy sets and props on the show, most notably the sketches featuring Molly Shannon's neurotic Catholic schoolgirl Mary Katherine Gallagher or Chris Farley's loud, obnoxious motivational speaker, Matt Foley.
• Troll: In the "Celebrity Jeopardy!" sketches, Sean Connery is easily the smartest and most lucid of the contestants, but he's more interested in getting under Alex Trebek's skin than actually winning the game. So dedicated he is to the idea of trolling Trebek, Connery wrote an album of dirty limericks for the sole purpose of being eligible for the "Rock & Roll" edition and even turned down a role in Harry Potter to be able to attend another edition. His favored insult towards Trebek are his many, many variations of Your Mom jokes.
• Trolling Translator: In a 1987 sketch, Kevin Nealon plays a translator live-translating a joint press conference by Ronald Reagan and Gorbachev, but he doesn't speak Russian very well. To cover Nealon "translates" Gorbachev saying "I'm now going to start speaking in a very obscure Russian dialect that very few have ever heard of and it will be impossible for your translator to translate." (paraphrased.)
• True Art Is Incomprehensible: Invoked in the Woodbridge High School Experimental Theater sketches, but while the students clearly believe this the effect is usually less "incomprehensible" and more "not really that good."
• Turn Your Head and Cough: One skit involved a doctor performing this test while inspecting a male patient's groin, asking him to cough over and over again. Another doctor soon enters the picture and both continue to perform this one part of the exam over and over. Then, a third doctor enters not recognizing the other two doctors already in the room, revealing the first two doctors to be impostors who just like to sneak into examination rooms and feel people's balls.
• Twofer Token Minority: Parodied in the sketch "Simu & Bowen", where the joke is that Bowen Yang's Overly Narrow Superlative representation milestones are worth more than Simu Liu's because Yang is a gay Asian. So while Simu Liu gets an award for being the first Asian to be deadpan on a theme park ride, Bowen Yang gets the same award for being the first gay Asian to do it.

U-V

• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: The "Matt Shatt" sketches, where a gorgeous woman (usually played by the host) brings up her loser husband (Mikey Day). The more dorky things come up about him, the more everybody tries to guess how the wife could be attracted to him, such as suggesting he must have a Gag Penis or that she must be blind.
• Undignified Death: A Halloween Episode featured four ghosts singing about their means of death, except one of them (played by Chance the Rapper) keeps avoiding his turn to sing. After a lot of convincing, he reveals his means of death: he developed a fetish after sitting on a 9-volt battery as a child, and when he built up a tolerance to that, he shoved a metal pipe up his ass and climbed up to get struck by a lightning bolt, getting his insides fried.
• The Unintelligible:
  • Vanessa Bayer as Dawn Lazarus, who doesn't mince her words so much as dice them up and serve them with a smile. It takes a rewatch or two but it can be interpreted.
    "Hep!"^note Mostly we figure that means "yes".
  • Cecily Strong as Representative Susan Collins became this, in a Meet the Press cold open from May 2019:
    Susan Collins: Well, you just bring it on, Chuck, 'cause if you think Susan Collins is a pushover, well, then, you...[folds up like a woodlouse and starts mumbling unintelligibly into her own jacket]
  • David Lynch (voiced by Phil Hartman) was portrayed as this when he called Kyle MacLachlan during his monologue to chew him out for casually revealing the ending to Twin Peaks.
• Unintelligible Accent: In "Don' You Go Rounin' Roun to Re Ro", Bill Hader plays an Action Hero who was just released from prison and is forced back into the criminal underworld by his old boss. The joke comes less than a third of the way into the video when their British accents become so intense that their words become muffled, sounding like unintelligible grunts, laughs or mad barking. Hilariously, this is considered a plus by film critics.
• Un-person: Season 49. A Woman Scorned ropes in an ex-CIA psy ops agent, who knows how to delete the offending person's government records as part of his Gaslighting scheme.

  "I tried to pay my taxes, but they said I don't exist!"

• Unwanted Assistance: Discussed; in typical pompous and self-righteous fashion, the Woodbridge High School Experimental Theater trope announce in one sketch that in support of LGBTQA+ rights, all proceeds from their latest show will be going to... Neil Patrick Harris. In the audience, one of their parents perplexedly notes that he doesn't actually need them to do that. Also overlaps with a bit with Condescending Compassion since (a) they're presumably only donating the money to him because he's gay, with the unspoken assumption that because he's gay, he automatically needs their charity and/or (b) they're presumably only donating to him because, for all their smug piousness, they don't actually know of and can't be bothered to find out about any more deserving individuals or charities assisting the LGBTQA+ community.
• Video Call Fail: The "Zoom Church" sketch made in the beginning months of the pandemic is about a pastor doing his best to hold worship over Zoom. It's incredibly difficult because his hundreds of constituents don't know how to hit the mute button, resulting in inappropriate interjections throughout the sketch.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot:
  • An infamous Season 20 sketch titled "Rookie Cop", where a murder victim is apparently so gruesome that all the cops/coroners/reporters/etc. who see pictures vomit everywhere. It was later parodied on 30 Rock.
  • In the Mark Jensen Christmas sketch, Will Ferrell was singing "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" while spinning around on a rotating platform. Gradually he became more and more nauseated until he vomited profusely.
  • The "indiscretion" part is arguable when it's shot in grainy night vision camera, as one of those horror movie campaigns where they use the audience reactions as part of the promos, but Melissa Mccarthy is clearly shown throwing up more than once as part of her epic Freak Out.
  • In the cold open of Season 46's Bill Burr/Jack White episode, Joe Biden (Jim Carrey) has a Teleporter Accident and ends up becoming the fly that sat on Vice President Mike Pence's head for two minutes during the 2020 Vice Presidential debate — then undergoing a Slow Transformation into Jeff Goldblum in a spoof of The Fly (1986). In keeping with the movie, when asked by the debate moderator for closing remarks Biden/Goldblum vomits before declaring "Be afraid! Be very afraid! And live from New York, it's Saturday Night!"

W

• Walk of Shame: In a 1977 Parody Commercial for "Hey You," a perfume for one-night stands, we see Gilda Radner doing a walk of shame after spending the night with a bar hook-up.
• Watched It for the Representation: Parodied In-Universe with the fake trailer "Lesbian Period Drama": Despite the Cliché Storm, wooden acting, and the leads played by straight women, "Lesbians Monthly" says, "Sure, I mean, I'm gonna see it."
  You get one a year. Make the most of it.
• Walking Shirtless Scene:
  • The "Sober Caligula" sketch has Taran Killiam in just a loincloth and a horse head mask.
  • Vladimir Putin, played by Beck Bennet, is shirtless all the time. Nobody seems fazed by his appearance, even the judges in a courtroom.
  • The popular "Funkytown Debate" sketch, due to using Word Salad Lyrics everywhere including character names, has Jay Pharoah as part of Captain Catfish's (Will Ferrell) staff Diaper Jones. He really is in a diaper.
• Waxing Lyrical:
  • Bernie Sanders (Larry David), in the Season 43 sketch "Message from the DNC". When the Democrats suggest that Bernie transfer his base of voters to a new leader, he says "No. If you liked it, you should've put a ring on it. Pass."
  • Season 37 had Maya Rudolph return in the role of Beyonce, talking about the birth of her first child (Blue Ivy Carter):
    "I asked the doctor 'Did I Have A Boy?' The doctor said 'No, you had a Single Lady'."
• We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties: Parodied on the banned TV Funhouse cartoon "Mediaopoly"; late in the song, after exposing many dark secrets about General Electric, a "technical difficulties" title card appears, implying GE censored the sketch. However, it's actually part of the sketch, since the chorus keeps singing afterwards. The singers even lampshade the fact that We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties is sometimes used as a cheap way to censor out anything that the sponsors or network may find controversial.
• We Don't Suck Anymore: Tom Hanks says this about the show during his monologue from 1996, after SNL improved following the disastrous 1994-95 season.
• Weird Moon: The Halloween episode of season 45. One sketch is about a full moon that keeps interrupting a dance lesson, and closing the curtains in front of it just makes it move to an open window. It's an even bigger problem when the dance instructor turns out to be a werewolf.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Sometimes the punchline in Weekend Update is just Colin Jost with a knowing "....dad." Which repaints the whole joke in a different light.
  "Today was National Compliment Day... dad."
• Wham Line:
  • Played for Laughs, not surprisingly, any time they parody soap operas, like "The Californians"
    Pete Davidson: What's with that accent?... I'm from Encino and I've never heard anything like that before.
  • In the fourth "Black Jeopardy" sketch, Tom Hanks appears as a rural Trump supporter named Doug and Darnell Hayes (Kenan) thinks he'll be the most disastrous white contestant yet:
    Darnell: "They out here saying, the new iPhone wants your thumbprint 'for your protection." (beeping) Oh, okay then, Doug.
    Doug: What is, "I don't think so. That's how they get you".
    Darnell: (stunned) YES! Yes! That's it!
  • From the "What Even Matters Anymore?" sketch:
    Kate: Jessica, you don't have to do this...
• What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: In the Feb. 4, 2017 cold open, a cranky Trump (Alec Baldwin) agrees to call other heads-of-state without getting briefed first, asking what could go wrong.
• Whole Costume Reference:
  • The Christmas sketch with Eddie Murphy involves Eddie as a Christmas elf in a wifebeater and sweat pants, as a deliberate reference to African-Americans who get overly hammy when interviewed on tv. The mention of a little white girl seeking help from him is a direct reference to Charles Ramsey.
  • The sketch where Dave Chappelle deliberately made Mikey Day to take over his role ends up with Mikey dressed like Kat Williams.
• Wicked Toymaker: One of the first recurring sketches was a segment called "Consumer Probe". The interviewer always wound up interviewing toymaker Irwin Mainway (Dan Aykroyd), who made and marketed children's toys like "Bag o' Glass" and "General Tranh's Secret Police Confession Kit".
• A Wild Rapper Appears!:
  • "Dongs All Over The World". Except that Anna Kendrick was already in the song, and her bit leads to a wild Icona Pop appearing.
  • Also parodied to an absurd extent in "Rap Song", where so many Wild Rappers appear that the lead singer becomes frustrated.
  • Inverted in "3 Sad Virgins", which is mostly a rap by Pete Davidson with a singing interlude by Taylor Swift.
  • From season 49, "Get That Boy Back" has host Ryan Gosling in this role (the actual lead vocals are Ego Nwodim, Chloe Fineman, newcome Chloe Troast and musical guest Chris Stapleton). In this case the context is pretty airtight, as the song is a typical Woman Scorned country theme and Ryan is the former CIA psy ops agent setting up a Gaslighting scheme for Troast's character.
• Win Her a Prize: There is a sketch that pokes fun at this where legendary quarterback Tom Brady struggles to win a prize for his girlfriend at the carnival.
• Wishing for More Wishes: In a sketch John Goodman plays a fisherman who catches a wish-granting fish. He hires a team of lawyers to craft his first two wishes so that they don't backfire; his third wish is to pay his lawyers. The lawyers' fee is 100 wishes.
• Wolf Whistle: In Weekend Update for Season 47 episode 5^*November 6, 2021, Colin Jost says the International Handball Federation says that female players can wear biking shorts instead of bikini bottoms, but the referees will have to whistle with a Wolf Whistle.
• Word Association Test: The seventh episode of Season 1, hosted by Richard Pryor, had a sketch in which a prospective black employee (Pryor) is interviewed by a white boss (Chevy Chase). Everything goes normally until partway through the test, when Chase breaks out the black racial epithets. Pryor counters with white racial epithets, escalating to:
  Interviewer: Jungle bunny!
  Mr. Wilson: Honky!
  Interviewer: Spade!
  Mr. Wilson: Honky honky!
  Interviewer: Nigger!
  Mr. Wilson: Dead honky!
  (In the end, Pryor's character gets the job.)
  • It should be noted that this sketch was cited (by Tina Fey, on a Season 31 episode that aired on the same day Richard Pryor died) as the sketch that solidified SNL's reputation as the "edgy, outrageous late-night sketch show".
• Working Class Anthem: Parodied in "Corporate Nightmare Song", where four Emo employees in an office job start out complaining about the "working stiff" lifestyle, until one by one they're all won over by it.
• World of Ham: Just about every cast member will overact like hell for some laughter.
• Worst News Judgement Ever: Every now and then on Weekend Update, often for the sake of a punchline, but some are salvageable:
  Cecily Strong: Two dogs from Oklahoma went for a three-block ride in their owner's car, after one of the dogs accidentally knocked the vehicle into gear, and the other dog accidentally opened up a map to Las Vegas, and then the first dog (Colin Jost laughing from offscreen) accidentally put on sunglasses, and then the second dog accidentally put on "Bad to the Bone", and then they hit a tree.
• Wring Every Last Drop out of Him: The Running Gag "Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead!" early on is intended as a parody of the ongoing news coverage of his health before his death, which the writers thought had verged on this.
• Writing Around Trademarks: The Beavis and Butt-Head sketch from season 49 - while they're allowed to call them Beavis and Butt-Head, they have t-shirts that say "Skull" and "Death Rock" instead of their signature Metallica and AC/DC ones.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Quite a few sketches revolve around this one person that probably shouldn't be there.
  • This one is about a black ops Seal team briefing that looks like something out of Zero Dark Thirty... except this one guy is approaching it like he's a '90s Anti-Hero. Then again, it is Bruce Willis.
  • Bobby Moynihan as recurring character Kirby, a Manchild Kindhearted Cat Lover who's inexplicably thrust into every High Concept action scenario out there, like a spoof of Armageddon (1998) that also has Bruce Willis. At least he doesn't cause all their deaths every time.
• Wrong Insult Offence: In his opening monologue in 2017, Kumail Nanjiani ^note Dinesh from Silicon Valley, co-writer and co-star of The Big Sick complained about racists telling him to "go back to India"...because he's never been there; he's from Pakistan.
  Kumail Nanjiani: Here's my problem with most racism: it's the inaccuracy. That's what bugs me. I'm like, "Do the research! Put in the work! You will see the benefits!" ... if someone was like, "Go back to Pakistan, which was part of India until 1947, and is now home to the world's oldest salt mine," I would be like, "That guy seems to know what he's talking about. I'll pack my bags."

X-Z

• Xenofiction: Dwayne Johnson/The Rock's Dumb Muscle portrayal of Superman spoofs the trope. As in most Superman adaptations, Superman uses his cover identity as journalist Clark Kent to blend in with humans, but his Daily Planet co-workers immediately find him out because, among other reasons, he keeps haplessly writing his articles from a Superman-centric perspective, e.g. "A man in New York was shot to death yesterday because bullets do not bounce off of human bodies."
• Xtreme Kool Letterz: Parodied in the "Z shirt" sketch from the episode hosted by Kevin Hart. The sketch is a commercial for the "Z-shirt" (which is just a T-shirt with the letter "Z" on it), and Hart's character keeps asking what kind of shirt it is, using every letter of the alphabet in order ("Is that an A-shirt?" "Is it a B-shirt?" etc.).
• Yank the Dog's Chain:
  • Adam Sandler hosting in season 44 had surprise guest Chris Rock joining him for the "I Was Fired" song:
  I was fired, I was fired/I was fired from NBC
  Then I ended up on In Living Color!/Three weeks later they took it off tv
  • Sean Connery pulls this off on two Celebrity Jeopardy! sketches.
    • The first time, the Final Jeopardy! category is "Things you like". Sean wrote "Alex Trebek" and tells him that his jokes are all good fun. Alex then asks to see what he wagered, and it's revealed that Sean wrote "sucks", making the screen say "Alex Trebek sucks." Lampshaded when Alex says, "I can't believe I fell for that."
    • Then, Alex and Sean share some good-natured laughed at Anne Heche's expense. Sean for his Final Jeopardy! response writes, "I'm sorry, Alex" and again tells him it's nothing personal. The rest of the phrase is revealed through Sean's wager: "Trebek is such a fruit."
• Yoko Oh No: One sketch in season 38 is about punk rocker Ian Rubbish (Fred Armisen), whose band The Bizarros shot to fame with his sweary anti-establishment rock tracks, until his open support for Margaret Thatcher and the resulting conflicts with his band members started to divide them. It's a rare case of the "Yoko" not needing to be anywhere near the band (though they did meet up eventually).
• You, Get Me Coffee: In the skit Undercover Boss : Where Are They Now?: Kylo Ren, Kylo Ren goes "undercover" as an intern named "Randy" on a First Order ship. He learns that the interns do the "bitch work" — clerical work, droid wrangling, and stuff like serving blue milk to rude officers.
• You Know What You Did:
  • Arianna Huffington (Nasim Pedrad) criticizing the Bridgegate scandal:
    "If it was done by a woman, she would close off all the lanes, and the neon lightboard would light up saying 'You know what you did!' "
  • One sketch is about a homemade game show with the housewife as the host and all her children as contestants. The rapidfire round is about all the other housewives who have pissed her off in some way that the kids have to guess at; one answer is a simple "she knows what she did."
• Your Mom:
  • From Weekend Update:
    Michael Che: Scientists say that when people french kiss they transfer over 80 million bacteria. This according to a recent study on yo momma.
  • Throughout the "Celebrity Jeopardy" sketches, Sean Connery frequently makes rude jokes about Alex Trebek's mother.
• You Say Tomato: The premise of the "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" song during Christopher Walken's monologue. Played with: Walken didn't alternate pronunciations like he was supposed to:
  Walken: You say potato, I say potato, you say tomato, I say tomato, potato, potato, tomato, tomato...
  (take two...)
  Walken: You say potahto, I say potahto, you say tomahto, I say tomahto, potahto, potahto, tomahto, tomahto...
• Youtuber Apology Parody: The Daniel Kaluuya / St. Vincent episode had a sketch featuring a fictional YouTube channel called "Prank Posse," where the YouTuber's history of abusive behavior and problematic pranks (such as "Shrek Costume at Funeral" and "Racist Bus Fart") comes to light, which he keeps addressing with somber but clearly insincere apology videos. He nearly kills his friend with a dangerous prank, makes an apology video where he promises to delay an upcoming video where he pranked said friend into kissing his penis, then releases the video anyway, remarking that the worst part about the situation is losing his sponsors. At the end of the video, his friend commits an apparently Deadly Prank on him, quickly says "I am so sorry," to the camera, then runs away.