Saturday Night Live/Trivia: Difference between revisions

** The famous sketch in which Chris Farley and Patrick Swayze compete to become Chippendale's dancers originally featured the Loverboy song "Working for the Weekend." Any time you see it now - and it shows up on ''all'' the "best of SNL" retrospectives - it features generic instrumental rock, presumably due to music licensing issues.

** While not really syndication, episodes availabe on NBC's On-demand service in cable markets have the musical guest performances and many of the bumpers removed.

** ''[[Mad TV]]'' fans might be surprised to discover that Jeff Richards and Taran Killam (two feature players who only spent one year on ''MADtv'' before leaving) were/are on this show. Jeff Richards was on ''[[Mad TV]]'' from 2000-01 before crossing over to ''SNL'', where he stayed from 2001 to the early half of 2004. Taran Killam also appeared on ''MADtv'' in 2001 (becoming the youngest cast member on that show at age 19) and was let go a year later. Nine years after appearing on ''MADtv'', he became one of four new feature players for ''SNL''.

*** Killam had started in sketch comedy even before that, appearing as Spalding in the [[The Amanda Show]] sketch ''Moody's Point''.

** Yes, 1980s-1990s kids' show lovers. The Kenan Thompson who is on ''SNL'' is the same Kenan Thompson who was on Nickelodeon's ''[[All That]]'' and ''[[Kenan and Kel]]''.

** New featured player Kate McKinnon, much like Erica Ash on ''[[Mad TV]]'', used to be a cast member on Logo's ''The Big Gay Sketch Show''.

** One 'missing episode' that was actually produced was Chevy Chase/Jr. Walker and the All-Stars, which aired in April 1981. Originally intended to start the revised second half of season 6 (after Jean Doumanian was replaced by Dick Ebersol, and a number of her cast members were fired), a writer's strike cut the season short. This episode has gone unseen in its original form since 1981 - its lone Comedy Central airing was heavily re-edited, and contained material from other season 6 episodes in place of a few original sketches.

** For reasons unknown, the season 27 episode hosted by Alec Baldwin with musical guest P.O.D. only aired once. Some of the sketches from that episode were seen, however, on the ''SNL'' clip show episode, "The Best of Alec Baldwin."

* [[Old Shame]]:

** The 12 episodes produced by Jean Doumanian during the 1980-81 season has been barred from syndication in America due to how poorly it was received by... just about everyone (though Comedy Central ''did'' air the Bill Murray/Delbert McClinton episode as part of a "Best of Eddie Murphy" marathon, NBC aired a full 90-minute version of the episode hosted by [[Jamie Lee Curtis]] with musical guest James Brown and Ellen Shipley as part of their "NBC All Night" rerun block, and Canada's Comedy Network has aired all 12 episodes uncut — including one where Charles Rocket drops an F-bomb during the goodnights, which led to everyone in Doumanian's cast to be fired save Murphy and Joe Piscopo). Universal claims to have stopped production on ''SNL'' season [[DV Ds]] because of music licensing issues (which, of course, is the true reason why all seasons after five haven't been put on DVD), but most fans have assumed it's because of the backlash and poor sales that would have happened had the 1980-1981 season been released. If you have a [[Bile Fascination]] as to how bad Season 6 really is, [[Keep Circulating the Tapes|then your best bet is to find a video collector who has this season]] or check out some video streaming or torrent sites.

* [[The Other Darrin]]: When cast members leave, they take their famous celebrity impersonations with them. When that happens, sometimes ''SNL'' will either find a replacement or just forget about it and move on. Some examples:

** When Will Ferrell left the show in 2002, he took his [[George W. Bush]] impersonation with him. Because of this, four other cast members had to play Dubya (Darrell Hammond, Chris Parnell, Will Forte, and Jason Sudeikis).

** In the infamous first ''Matt Foley'' sketch with [[Chris Farley]], near the end Matt tumbles over and breaks the table. This was purely accidental; Farley tripped and crashed into the table, and it went from there, thankfully managing to continue the sketch uninterrupted. The moment was so memorable though that most later Foley sketches had the character crashing into walls or furniture.

* [[What Could Have Been]]: There are a handful of celebrities who have hosted ''SNL'' who originally auditioned to be cast members on the show, but never made it.

** John Goodman: Also auditioned for Season 6, but lost out to Joe Piscopo.

** Geena Davis: Also auditioned for Season 10, but lost to Pamela Stephenson.

** Johnny Knoxville: Was offered the chance to do his ''Jackass'' stunts as part of a short film series for Season 21, but rejected the offer.

*** In addition to the hosts who auditioned and never made it, there are also comedians who never hosted but did audition to be in the cast, only to be turned down.

**** Dom Irrera: Auditioned for Season 6, but lost to Gilbert Gottfried.

**** Robert Townsend: Also auditioned for Season 6 and was chosen to be a cast member, but an agent named Neil Levy was gunning for Eddie Murphy instead and Townsend forgot to sign his contract.

**** Stephnie Weir: Auditioned for Season 25 (1999-2000), but lost to Rachel Dratch and ended up on ''[[Mad TV]]''.

**** ''[[Mad TV]]'''s Jordan Peele (known for his dead-on impersonations of Ja Rule, [[Morgan Freeman]], [[Sesame Street|Big Bird]], Montel Williams, Flava Flav, and Forest Whitaker): Also auditioned for Season 33 when Lorne was looking for a cast member to play Barack Obama.

** Also, ''Saturday Night Live'' was originally supposed to have one person act as a permanent host (Albert Brooks was chosen), but NBC and Lorne Michaels thought the show would be better if it were a little less like ''Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In'' (which Lorne wrote for before creating ''SNL'') and had a celebrity host every week.

** Burt Reynolds himself once talked with Norm MacDonald about a ''Celebrity Jeopardy!'' sketch where the real Burt would come out and punch Norm in the face, then the real Burt would take over and be worse than the fake one. This ended up not happening when Norm got fired.