Saturday Night Live/YMMV

The show as a whole contains examples of:

• Broken Base: Dick Ebersol's era. Some regard it as the high point of the show after the original cast; others think of it as a bastardized version of the original concept, designed to pimp Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo (and later, Martin Short, Billy Crystal, and Christopher Guest) at the expense of everyone else. And there are those who say that it may not be as great as Lorne Michaels' original cast, but it is worlds better than what Jean Doumanian turned out in her short stint as executive producer.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: For every Funny Aneurysm Moment on this show, there are at least a couple of Hilarious in Hindsight moments that make the sketch funnier years after the sketch aired. Some examples:
  • In a second season episode hosted by Eric Idle, there are two big examples of Hilarious in Hindsight in a sketch involving Idle and Dan Aykroyd as cops who dress in drag:
    • The sketch is derailed when John Belushi (also in drag) tells Idle that drag doesn't work in America. Fast forward to the 1990s and 2000s when drag comedies starring Robin Williams and Eddie Murphy make for some of the biggest hits.
    • Throughout the sketch, Aykroyd is doing a Jack Webb impression, yet when the sketch derails Aykroyd claims that his impression sucks. Cut to 1987 when Aykroyd did a fantastic Joe Friday impression in the major motion picture adaptation of Dragnet alongside Tom Hanks.
  • The premiere had a fake commercial for a multi-bladed razor and the slogan that pointed out that consumers are so stupid that they would actually buy this. Multi-bladed razors became very real and actually would sell well in the late 1990s.
    • To be more specific, twin-blade razors were becoming the standard, so the mock commercial was about tri-blade razors, implying that they would be a stupid idea. Nowadays we have quad-blade razors...
  • A sketch on the Season 23 episode hosted by John Goodman (with musical guest Paula Cole) had a sketch where airline passengers are attacked by cobras. This sketch first aired in 1998, a scant eight years before the movie Snakes on a Plane hit the theaters.
  • In 1994 (on the Season 20 premiere), there was the "Steve Martin's Penis Beauty Cream" fake infomerical, featuring the line "Just take a small amount and rub gently on the penis for several minutes up to a half-hour. You'll notice a difference right away!" About a decade later, Maxoderm hits the market with the exact same advertising pitch.
  • On the Season 30 episode hosted by Tom Brady, there's a sketch that takes place backstage where Payton Manning (Seth Meyers) asks Brady why he was chosen to host over Manning. The real Manning would host in Season 32.
  • In a Season 29 episode hosted by Ben Affleck, he touted "Bennifer" T-shirts during the monologue, explaining that he had unfortunately ordered 50,000 of them prior to his breakup with Jennifer Lopez, and went on to offer several other Portmanteau Couple Name combos such as "Benyonce", "Mary-Kate and Ashfleck", and (in the unlikely event that Matt finally came around), "Ben-Gay". Only a couple years later, Affleck would get hitched to Jennifer Garner, making those "Bennifer" shirts pretty valuable again.
  • In 1998, Alec Baldwin hosted a Season 24 episode. In the opening monologue, Jimmy Fallon appears and tells Alec that he was given a prediction about his future in which he becomes famous enough in 2011 to host SNL. Thirteen years later, Jimmy Fallon is now one of TV's most popular late-night personalities and hosts Season 37's Christmas episode.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Most people who watch the show only watch it just to see one thing (be it a favorite sketch/recurring character/cast member/favorite host) and cite it as the main reason to watch the show.
• Nostalgia Filter: As noted above, those who grew up with the show are among the most vocal critics of its current shape (if they still watch it at all; otherwise, it's Complaining About Shows You Don't Watch... Anymore). Also, because 60-minute cable reruns and video compilations have trimmed a lot of the weaker material from the older shows, it's easy to forget that even during its good seasons SNL had bad moments (from lousy hosts and musical guests to recurring characters and sketches that suffer from being underdeveloped and/or annoying — though this can apply to the stuff that people actually remember or have currently seen). The DVD box sets of uncut and complete seasons of the show, in the original order and from the beginning, may be helping to undercut this; check out the reviews at DVDTalk.com.
  • The Nostalgia Filter and Seasonal Rot (see below) tropes were mentioned on the monologue to the Dana Carvey/Linkin Park episode, in which Carvey mentions how former fans of SNL always cite his era (from 1986 to 1993) as SNL's best era. It was even sung by Carvey with special guest, Jon Lovitz.
• Ruined FOREVER: As noted below in Seasonal Rot, there are indeed moments in the series' history where it hit the nadir of entertainment. However, the show gets this trope a lot for issues ranging from the departure of a cast member (even if said cast member left of their own accord) to a poorly received sketch. This trope was hilariously Lampshaded by Martin Short. In his monologe, he goes on at length about the constant back-and-forth of people embracing the show, condemning it and then embracing it again - concluding with "And then the second season started."
• Seasonal Rot: Just like in the Nostalgia Filter entry, there are former fans who believe the show hasn't been the same since whenever the last time they saw it — usually, it's Seasons 1-5 (Fall 1975 to Spring 1980), but there have been other claims of when SNL started to seasonally rot, like when a fan favorite cast member (such as Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Eddie Murphy, Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, etc.) leaves. The transitional periods between old casts and new ones are usually low periods, with Season 6 (1980-81), the first without any original cast members, widely considered the most disastrous in the show's history. Season 20 (1994-95) is also infamous due to the departure of Phil Hartman, reports of backstage tension between cast members, and the weak ideas for sketches (most of them were about the O.J. Simpson murder trial).
  • Season 11 (when Lorne Michaels came back and tried to assemble a cast of semi-famous people to be cast members, only to almost get canned due to plummeting Nielsen ratings) from 1985-86 also counts. According to the book "Live From New York: The Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live", a lot of the staff (including Al Franken and then-future Simpsons writer George Meyer) view Season 11 as terrible because the first episode hosted by Madonna wasn't well-received, which led to plummeting ratings and reviews stating that SNL's new cast at the time wasn't funny, the writing was too weird and thin, and the show as a whole has run its course and needed to end.
• Seinfeld Is Unfunny: One of the show's many curses (the curse of not being considered an edgy sketch show, thanks to the many Dueling Shows that always try to one-up the humor — the biggest offenders being Fridays, In Living Color, and Mad TV), besides the "cast members dying" curse and the Funny Aneurysm Moments it's accrued over the years. Unlike those curses, this one is strictly subjective.
• Special Effects Failure: SNL has always been known for flimsy sets, cheap costumes, and obvious Stock Footage (Lorne Michaels even said on an E! special about SNL's history that the show had this problem), especially in the 1970s and 1980s episodes (not so much in the episodes of the 1990s, the 2000s, and the 20-Teens, but it does crop up occasionally). More recent seasons have occasionally added in bad Chroma Keying as well. Some sketches have used this and ended with the cheap set getting destroyed in some way.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks: The near-constant changing of writers and cast members is one of the most common reasons why fans have a love/hate relationship with the show. Seasonal Rot is the other.

Individual sketches contain examples of:

• Crowning Moment of Funny: Dana Carvey returned as a guest-host and did another Church Lady skit, which includes the Church Lady attempting to have Snooki exorcised, and then feeling herself fall prey to the allure of Justin Bieber.

Church Lady: I want some of that sweet Bieber!

• Crowning Music of Awesome: The death metal version of The Golden Girls theme on the Betty White/Jay-Z episode, the spoof of Insane Clown Posse's "Miracles" on the Ryan Phillippe/Ke$ha episode, "Good Night Saigon" as sung by Will Ferrell, Green Day, the entire cast, and a boatload of special guest stars on the Will Ferrell/Green Day episode, Elvis Costello singing "Radio Radio" (which at the time was rejected for being anti-media) instead of the song he was supposed to sing on the Miskel Spillman episode, Aerosmith's rendition of the Wayne's World theme with Wayne, Garth, and Tom Hanks — there has to be more than this...
  • How about the catalog of songs composed by The Lonely Island. To name a few, Dick in a Box, I'm on a Boat, Jizz in My Pants and so on and so forth.
    • "I JUST HAD SEX AND IT FELT SO GOOD! A WOMAN LET ME PUT MY PENIS INSIDE OF HER!"
    • An example from the first season: in February, 1976, Desi Arnaz was both host and musical guest. He closed out the program with a performance of his signature song, "Babalu". Arnaz, who was 59 years old at the time, threw himself into the song like he was thirty years younger, playing a big conga drum and leading a conga line of cast & crew members around the studio. In fact, he threw himself into it so much that those in the control room were genuinely worried he'd collapse and die on live television. Thankfully, he didn't and it's a great moment.
    • An example from the second season: in October, 1976, musical guest Joe Cocker started singing "Feelin' Alright". After the first verse, he was joined onstage by John Belushi...as Joe Cocker (even wearing same outfit). Belushi's impersonation was flawless during the second verse, and the song eventually turned into a duet between Cocker and "Cocker". Another great moment.
    • It has to be mentioned that SNL also birthed The Blues Brothers, long credited with bringing the blues genre back to prominence.
• Dude, Not Funny: In a 1995 "Weekend Update" sketch, David Spade, as part of his "Hollywood Minute" segment, made a brutal Take That at former SNL star Eddie Murphy's (then-)lackluster career, saying "Look, kids, a falling star! Make a wish!". This made Murphy so mad that he called SNL about it. To this day, Murphy still hasn't forgiven Spade.
  • Some of Seth Meyers' jokes on Weekend Update are often met with the audience groaning over how tasteless the joke is. In fact, a lot of past Weekend Update anchors have had this happen to them (particularly Brad Hall, Dennis Miller, Norm MacDonald, and Colin Quinn)
• Ear Worm: The Ambiguously Gay Duo! The Ambiguously Gay Duo!
• Every One Remembers the Stripper: The recent episode hosted by Channing Tatum (who actually was a stripper for a year before becoming an actor), the monologue especially.
  • Inverted in the monologue as Tatum (the stripper) remembers all of his customers (an allegedly religious woman named Denise, a married woman named Bridget [whom Tatum remembers as "Flithy Bridget" because of all the filthy things she would ask for], a man named Leslie [who ends up dying when Tatum uses his stripper moves to refresh his memory], and Leslie's doctor, Dr. Matthews), much to their chagrin.
  • The episode hosted by Alec Baldwin and his wife at the time Kim Basinger on February 12, 1994 will forever be remembered as the episode that had the "Canteen Boy Gets Molested" sketch (and the episode after that, hosted by Martin Lawrence, will be remembered for Martin's raunchy monologue about women's hygiene [which was so tasteless, it nearly got everyone on the show fired and is often cut in reruns and replaced with title cards explaining the gist of the monologue and why it can't be shown on TV anymore]).
  • Likewise (for a nonsexual example) for the Tim Robbins episode from season 18, which was the notorious episode in which Sinead O'Connor rips Pope John Paul II's photo and screams, "Fight the real enemy!"
• Funny Aneurysm Moment: A lot of past sketches are harder to look at (and laugh at) now due to cast member deaths, host deaths, or the "prediction" of a horrifying/tragic/controversial event that was once played for laughs and not thought to be real at all. Some examples:
  • The infamous "Don't Look Back in Anger" short film with an elderly John Belushi as the last living member of the original "Not Ready for Primetime" cast who visits his fellow cast members' graves...then dances on them at the end. (What's more disturbing than Belushi's going out first is that the short film "predicted" Gilda Radner would be one of the dead cast members.)
  • A lesser known example from the "Not Ready for Prime Time" era is the sketch "Least-Loved Bedtime Stories". Michael O'Donoghue narrates a story called "The Little Engine that Died", where he says "I think I can...I Think I Can...HEARTATTACK...OHMYGODTHEPAIN!" In 1994 "Mr. Mike" woke up, felt what was thought to be a severe migraine headache, and screamed "OH MY GOD" in pain and later died from cerebral hemorrhage. O'Donoghue was an SNL writer known for his sadistic humor and frequent migraines, making this a literal "funny aneurysm moment" and a Karmic Death.
  • In Season 5 (1979-80), one of the sketches in the Strother Martin-hosted episode was about a dying man who recorded a video will. In August 1980, Martin died, not only making the episode (Martin's last acting gig, mind you) he hosted a Missing Episode, but making the video will sketch (which he appeared in) a lot less funny.
  • Any time Chris Farley faked a heart attack during the Chicago Superfans sketches. Also, the one-off sketch where Farley plays a man called "The Relapse Guy" who keeps going on and falling off the wagon.
  • The final sketch on the Season 19 finale (hosted by Heather Locklear) where Phil Hartman sings a lullaby to Chris Farley. It was meant to be sweet and signal the end of the season, but with both Farley and Hartman dead, it's now too depressing to watch.
    • What's worse is they died within six months of each other (Hartman in May 1998, Farley in December 1997).
    • Similarly, the 1990 "Chippendales" sketch featuring Farley and host Patrick Swayze.
  • On the Season 11 premiere hosted by Madonna, there was a cold opening where then-NBC executive Brandon Tartikoff announces that he's subjecting the 1985-86 season cast to mandatory urine tests for drugs (this sketch was later Edited for Syndication, as the censors in the 1980s thought that the idea of urine testing was too taboo for late-night TV at the time — never mind that SNL is supposed to be the vanguard of edgy, late-night TV humor). One of the cast members during Season 11 was a 20-year-old Robert Downey Jr., who would later spend the 1990s being more well-known for his drug abuse and arrests than his movies (though it was playing drug addicts that got Downey back into stardom in the 2000s).
  • When Phil Hartman came back to host for the second time (in Season 22, aka 1996-97), he says in his monologue that he bought his family's affection with the money he makes from being on News Radio and The Simpsons. Apparently it didn't work, when you consider what happened to Hartman a few months later.
  • The episode hosted by Charlize Theron during Season 26 (2000-01) had a cold opening called "A Glimpse into Our Possible Future", a sketch showing what would happen to America if George W. Bush were President (and later, if Al Gore were President and if Ralph Nader were President). While the sketch did exaggerate how far George W. Bush (Will Ferrell) would run America into the ground (like setting the Great Lakes on fire or giving Texas to Communists), lines like "I hope I get a war. Wars are like executions supersized" and "I killed Dick Cheney in a hunting accident" (and the fact that his new map of the United States shows several flooded states starting in Louisiana and pooling in the Midwest and California as a flaming wreck) now don't seem so funny.
  • When she came back to host the Season 30 finale in 2005, Lindsay Lohan is visited by "Future Lindsay" (Amy Poehler), who tells her to take it easy with the partying. Cut to five years later, and jokes about Lohan becoming a drunken, drugged-out mess with no career aren't so funny anymore, though she did host again in 2012 in the hopes of making a comeback, with a lot of jokes about how Lohan still has a long way to go before anyone can take her seriously again ^[1] (and Lohan even made fun of herself by playing a criminal in a "Scared Straight" sketch).
  • On the Seth Rogen/Phoenix episode from Season 34, Seth Meyers (the Weekend Update anchor) did a report on how during Michael Jackson's summer world tour, he would bring his son onstage, who would be accompanied by a police officer who would have Michael Jackson arrested. Unfortunately, the concert (and the punchline to the joke) would never come to pass due to Jackson's death two months after the episode originally aired.
  • Then there's that Digital Short where Bill Hader plays a man who writes a letter to his sister and his friend (Andy Samberg) shoots him, leading to the shooting deaths of another man (episode host Shia LaBeouf), the sister (Kristen Wiig), and two police officers (Fred Armisen and Jason Sudeikis). Two days after the sketch aired, the shooting at Virginia Tech happened, which was one of two reasons why the sketch never appeared on NBC's Saturday Night Live webpage, which has video highlights of past and present sketches (the other reason being that NBC never cleared the copyright to the song used in the sketch). What a shame that everyone overreacted to a simple parody of The OC. As it was, the short became one of the first to be unofficially popularized on YouTube. Memetic Mutation followed — the Imogen Heap song which SNL couldn't get cleared has now been sampled for a hip-hop beat.
  • The episode from Season 35 hosted by Blake Lively from Gossip Girl had a Weekend Update segment where Abby Elliot plays a looped-out Brittany Murphy who thinks she's hosting SNL with musical guest Blink-182 (Quick note: Brittany Murphy actually did host SNL during Season 28 in 2002, only the musical guest was Nelly). The Lively episode aired on December 5, 2009, fifteen days before the real Murphy would suddenly die of cardiac arrest. Because of this, Hulu.com pulled the video of this segment and the NBC rerun of this episode doesn't have this part.
  • Here's one that doesn't involve death, but still became controversial after the fact — on the Anne Hathaway/The Killers episode, there was a sketch about the assorted deadbeats and greedy people who would benefit from the economic bailout at the time. One of the people was a couple by the name of Herbert and Marion Sandler (longtime cast member Darrell Hammond and two-year feature player Casey Wilson), who screwed Wachovia Bank out of a lot of money and personally thanked the Congress for not holding them responsible for their corrupt activities. Who would have guessed that Herbert and Marion Sandler were an actual couple that actually did this (according to Lorne Michaels, he and the other writers had no clue about this until after the sketch aired)? Because of this, the Internet video version of the CSPAN Bailout sketch and the NBC rerun of the Hathaway episode edited out the entire part with the Sandler couple.
  • When Al Gore hosted a Christmas episode in Season 28 (2002-03), the monologue showed how he picked his running mate, rejecting John Kerry (Seth Meyers) and John Edwards (Will Forte). Gore then remarks that "one of them would make a great Vice President someday". Kerry and Edwards would team up to run for President and Vice-President in 2004, only to be beaten by Bush and Cheney (who were running for re-election).
    • A Meet the Press sketch on the episode hosted by Senator John McCain (the genuine article) in 2002 had him denying that he would run for President in 2004. He was right — he didn't run in 2004. He ran in 2008, and depending on your political leanings the fact that he ran and lost is either an aneurysm moment or Hilarious in Hindsight.
  • Even the Jean Doumanian era isn't immune to the Funny Aneurysm Moment. On the infamous episode hosted by Charlene Tilton (from Dallas), cast member Charles Rocket is shot during the final sketch. During the goodnights at the end of the show, Rocket says that he'd like to know "who the fuck did it" (the line was what led NBC to fire Doumanian and her cast, save for Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo, because they thought that it was a ploy to garner to save SNL's falling ratings at the time by doing something outrageous, i.e. drop an F-bomb). The Aneurysm Moment comes when you realize/discover that A) another SNL cast member would actually meet his fate by getting shot (Phil Hartman) and B) Charles Rocket actually did die in October 2005, but he wasn't shot by anyone — he was found dead in his backyard with a slashed throat and police ruled his death a suicide.
  • Also from the Doumanian era, at the end of the season premiere (hosted by Elliot Gould), Gould introduces the cast again and tells the audience "We're gonna be around forever!" Eleven episodes later, all but Murphy and Piscopo were fired after the F-bomb debacle on the episode hosted by Tilton and most of the cast has all but disappeared from the limelight.
    • There's another way to look at the "We're gonna be around forever!" line as an Aneurysm Moment — if you're a fan of the original 1975-80 SNL, the line comes across as a prediction/warning that SNL will never be canned (no matter how much it's come close), but it won't be the same as the original.
  • A lot of Season 2 jokes and sketches about the swine flu outbreak in 1976 don't really come off as dated anymore now that there's a round two. Parodied on a fake commercial about a barbecue restaurant called Carter ' Sons whose 2002 commercial aired seven years later, making its "Swine Fever" ad campaign particularly distressing to watch.
  • In the 1985-86 season, there was an episode hosted by Pee-Wee Herman that had two (count 'em two) Aneurysm Moments:
    • The cold opening where Pee-Wee performs a tightrope walk across the World Trade Center towers and falls, screaming the show's opening line. Thanks to the 9/11 attacks, whatever humor can be mined from this sketch has been tainted from tragedy (like everything else made before 2001 that shows New York City with the World Trade Center towers as part of the skyline).
    • Then, there was a sketch where Pee-Wee is thrown in jail and meets the Pathological Liar, Tommy Flanagan (Jon Lovitz). Pee-Wee (or rather, Paul Reubens) would actually find himself on the wrong side of the law in the 1990s and early 2000s (both for sexual offenses). The fact that Pee-Wee is screaming "I'm innocent! I'm innocent!" lends more to the cringe factor of rewatching this sketch.
      • Pee-Wee Herman seems to be a bad-luck charm for the show. The 1/15/2011 episode featured a digital short in which Pee-Wee and Andy Samberg get drunk together and beat up CNN's Anderson Cooper by smashing a chair over his head. Less than three weeks later, Cooper was violently attacked while covering the 2011 Egyptian uprising in Cairo.
  • The Christmas episode from Season 28 (2002-03): in the cold opening, Al Gore is worried when he can't find his wife Tipper, then when he finds her they kiss so long and so hard that it takes a taser for them to separate. On June 1, 2010, Al and Tipper announced their separation.
  • In the Colin Firth/Norah Jones episode from Season 29, Bill Clinton (Darrell Hammond) remarks that John Edwards is like a "boring version" of himself, stating "This guy might have sex in the Oval Office, but he'd probably do it in the missionary position — with his wife." The Rielle Hunter affair and the sex tape scandal beg to differ.
  • A sketch on the Topher Grace episode from Season 30 (2004-05 season) called "The Not Incredible Adventures of the Down-And-Out Dollar" parodies the fact that the U.S. dollar had reached an all-time low by having a tiny dollar bill (Amy Poehler) being mocked by currencies from other countries, one of which is a Euro (episode host Topher Grace), who brags that he's doing well in every country in the European Union. That would prove to be so very false five years later with news of several European countries suffering from economic meltdown (what's worse is that the Euro mentions that Greece was doing better than America economically in 2005, which isn't all that true now).
    • Then again, the Euro is still worth more than the American dollar, so it isn't all that off.
  • Given his current incidents of being sexist (calling a female officer "Sugar Tits," the abusive phone calls, etc), it's hard to look at Mel Gibson as a "dream gynecologist," as seen in this popular sketch from the late 1980s.
  • The season 29 episode hosted by Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson (particularly the "MTV Future" sketch in which Nick and Jessica are shown as an old married couple), now that the two aren't together anymore (of course, the same can be said for the other episodes hosted by famous couples, like Tom and Roseanne Arnold and Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger [even though Basinger didn't appear in a lot of sketches, and considering the Baldwin-Basinger episode itself became notorious for the "Canteen Boy Gets Molested" sketch, a Funny Aneurysm Moment is the least of that episode's worries]), though that could also be Hilarious in Hindsight for anyone who hated the two or were sick of the media coverage.
  • In Jim Carrey's monologue on his second time hosting (in January 2011), he states that he loves hosting again, especially at this time, since 2012 may be The End of the World as We Know It (never mind the notorious "prediction" that the world would end on May 21st) and that people should spend 2011 making the most of what they have. The aneurysm moment comes when he says, "When the earth opens up, so will new parking spaces." Two months after this episode aired, Japan's earth really did open up, thanks to that earthquake (and, no, there were no new parking spaces born from it).
  • Once upon a time, in the mid-to-late 1990s, SNL aired a pretaped fake commercial called "Homocil," a prescription medication for parents who were secretly intolerant of their preteen sons who acted very Camp Gay. One scene featured a black boy presenting a pan of creme brulee to his father (played by Tracy Morgan), with the father chugging an entire perscription bottle of Homocil and chasing it with a bottle of beer (very dangerous, by the way, no matter what age you are). In June 2011, Tracy Morgan (now a cast member of 30Rock; he left SNL at the end of the 2002-2003 season [season 28], but kept making cameos in seasons 29 and 33) caught controversy for his homophobic remarks in his stand-up performance, including his claim that if his son was ever suspected of being gay, he would kill him (it was later found that Morgan wasn't actually serious about that comment, but it was still very uncomfortable for many people nonetheless).
  • David Duchovny's second hosting gig opened with an X Files sketch in which Mulder's latest government source is revealed to be Will Ferrell's Janet Reno. While fighting off Reno's advances, Mulder deadpans that he's "reeeeally into pornography" - a reference to a Running Gag on The X-Files that became a lot harsher after Duchovny entered treatment for sex addiction.
  • During the third season, when Dan Aykroyd was co-anchor of "Weekend Update", he read a news story advising, "Cocaine and heroin don't mix. If you must snort, don't shoot." In 1982, John Belushi (who was Aykroyd's friend) died of an overdose, which happened to be an injection of cocaine and heroin.
  • The season 36 episode hosted by Russell Brand (which aired on Febraury 2011; it was the Valentine's Day episode of season 36) had a one-off sketch about three proper British ladies (all played by episode host Brand and two male cast members [Bill Hader and Andy Samberg]) who try to have a teatime talk show, which is located on a fault that's really sensitive to earthquakes and hilarity does ensue when they keep getting interrupted by said earthquakes. Thanks to Japan's earthquake the very next month, the sketch was found to be in bad taste and had to be replaced in reruns with a parody of the movie trailer Unstoppable (which was originally on the episode hosted by Scarlett Johanssen).
• Nightmare Fuel / Lightmare Fuel: This show doesn't really do this Trope (opting instead for Nausea Fuel and Paranoia Fuel — both of which are played for laughs and some satire; see Refuge in Audacity) as much as its competitor sketch shows, like Mad TV (whose scary stuff was more accidental due to its overuse of Dead Baby Comedy) or Fridays (with its "Diner of the Dead" sketch), but SNL did do a particularly scary Digital Short where James Franco appears on a kids' show where the cast pick out knives, ingest pills, turn out the lights, and kill each other. Just the sight of a bloodied Franco standing over the corpses of the kids as two uncaring scientists crown him the winner of a twisted, unexplained game with Franco screaming "WHAT'S GOING ON?!" and no one answering him is just...yeah.
  • Another example, on a Christmas episode: John Malkovich reading "Twas The Night Before Christmas" to little kids and interrupting the story to dispense horrifying and depressing facts about the holiday season (like the giant spike in the suicide rate, how Santa Claus would burn up in the atmosphere if it was physically possible for him to fly through the air around the world with eight magic reindeer, and the existence of a Portuguese Santa Claus called Pai Natale that likes to eat the toes of naughty children).
  • Ke$ha performing "Your Love Is My Drug" in glow-in-the-dark tribal makeup on the Season 35 episode hosted by Ryan Phillippe. Whether or not you like the musical guest performances on SNL (or Ke$ha in general), you have to admit that it's freaky as hell.
  • Jim Carrey, Taran Killam, and Bill Hader as murderous machine-operated puppets in an amusement park ride is scarily accurate, right down to the Uncanny Valley appearance (provided by Jim Carrey, Taran Killam, and Bill Hader). What's scarier is that the original ending had Kenan Thompson's character beheaded and made into the latest Merryville Brother robot. Sadly, it was changed to Kenan getting attacked by the robots and his robotic clone appearing for no reason due to last-minute Executive Meddling.
    • The Merryville Brothers sketch on the Justin Timberlake/Lady Gaga episode is a little Lighter and Softer compared to the one from the Jim Carrey/The Black Keys episode...until the Fridge Horror sets in: if the robots tried to kill Kenan Thompson's character, then who's to say that they wouldn't do the same to Nasim Pedrad's character or Jason Sudeikis's, since Nasim's character got married to the robots played by Justin Timberlake and Taran Killam and Jason got paired up with the robot played by Bill Hader?
  • Jim Carrey's painted face at the end of "The Black Swan" sketch, which makes him eerily look like The Riddler from Batman Forever and the laugh paired with the music from Black Swan will haunt you for days.
  • "Der Lacheln Beherrscht" ("The Smile Masters"): a Nickelodeon kids' show imported from Germany. Everything about it is deranged, from the angry Gratuitous German to the singing skeleton (voiced by Tina Fey) to the hosts (played by Will Ferrell, Horatio Sanz, Chris Parnell, and episode host Julia Stiles).
  • On the season 37 episode, hosted by Melissa McCarthy, the mock advertisement played after the monologue was about a doll called Lil' Poundcake, a doll that has been FDA approved to administer the HPV vaccine to children under 10, complete with retractable hypodermic needle. The commercial was supposed to be funny and poke fun at the current issue, but this troper still can't sleep.
  • Taran Killam as Bruce Jenner on the "Kim Kardashian's Fairy Tale Divorce" sketch. Killam made Jenner's face so frozen and creepy, it should be used in public service announcements for the dangers of excessive cosmetic surgery. Also: the way Kristen Wiig as Kim Kardashian's mom, Kris, says, "What do I have to do to get attention: murder someone?" is a tad unsettling.
• Pandering to the Base: When Bill Hader hosted the show in 2014, a new Puppetry 101 skit with his puppet Tony was done, as Bill had appeared on Howard Stern's show shortly before that episode, and Stern told him that the previous skit with Tony was his favorite of all time. Bill even hinted that Tony may make a comeback when he hosts, and even said if he did, people could thank Howard Stern for it.
• Unfortunate Implications: Fred Armisen as Barack Obama. Apparently, Lorne Michaels does not realize how completely wrong it is for someone who isn't white (Armisen is Japanese, German, and Venezuelan) to play a black man (though it's safe to say that Fred Armisen was never put in black make-up for his role, and, in some viewers' ears, Armisen actually has the voice down). Made worse by the fact that two black comic actors (Jordan Peele from Mad TV and Donald Glover from Community) originally auditioned to play Obama around the time that SNL was put on hiatus because of the Writers' Guild strike of 2007-2008.
  • Having a cast member of one race play someone famous from another race is nothing new to the show. Jimmy Fallon (the same one who became notorious for cracking up on-camera) once played Chris Rock in a Season 25 sketch, which is more of an unfortunate implication than Fred Armisen playing Obama.

1. ↑ Kenan Thompson checking her eyes for signs of drug abuse -- then mentioning that he's been stoned since starring in Good Burger, Kristen Wiig trying to frisk Lohan, and Jimmy Fallon cameoing to tell Lohan that in case she relapses, Jon Hamm from Mad Men will take her place