40 Best 'Saturday Night Live' Characters of All Time

Stephon, Roseanne Roseannadanna, Opera Man, and more of the best characters from 50 years of SNL

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It Has Everything

Legends, obscurities, opera men: a look back at the funniest concoctions to grace Studio 8H

February 15, 2025

Saturday Night Live characters: Gilda Radner as Roseanne Roseannadanna; Bill Hader as Stephon; Eddie Murphy as Mr. Robinson NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal/Getty Images; Will Heath/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal/Getty Images; RM Lewis Jr./NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal/Getty Images

No comedy empire has ever given us as many unforgettable characters as Saturday Night Live. Fans develop an intense bond with their favorite SNL heroes—we love our Stefons, our Mr. Robinsons, our Roseanne Rosannadannas. So here’s a salute to our picks for the 50 best characters—not necessarily the most famous, just the funniest. Some are legendary, others are deep cuts. Some appeared week after week; others only showed up once or twice. (Better one dose of Gene Frenkle than a herd of Goat Boys.) There’s no celebrity impersonations here—that would be a whole other list. (Painful as it is to leave out Darrell Hammond’s Sean Connery or Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin.) But these unforgettable characters come from every era of SNL’s wild and crazy 50-year history. The one thing they have in common is that they’re classics. Live from New York, it’s Saturday night.

Roseanne Rosannadanna

Image Credit: NBC/NBCU Photo Bank /Getty

Gilda Radner’s immortal frizzy-haired wiseass, snapping her gum and discussing boogers, warts and nose hair, while Jane Curtin squirms in disgust. Roseanne was always a divisive gal—for some fans, she was an early example of an SNL character who got recycled way too many times. But she’s gained a whole new resonance in the age of the social-media overshare. We are all Jane Curtin now.

Best line: “It’s always something.”

Father Guido Sarducci

Image Credit: Alan Singer/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty

The ultimate Hip Priest. Father Guido is the rock critic and gossip columnist for the Vatican newspaper, played by Don Novello with his constant cigarette and tinted shades. Novello created Father Guido after he found the priestly robes in a thrift store for $7.50. The predictable move would have been to make him the butt of the joke. Yet Novello turns him into a wise guy, sponsoring a “Find the Pope in the Pizza” contest and dishing about the Last Brunch. He also reviews the various Popes’ music—he’s a big fan of Paul VI’s White Album.

Best line: “The Pope’s doing an encyclical. It’s called the Vita Est Lavorum. In English, that means ‘Life: It’s a Job.’”

Brian Fellow

Image Credit: Mary Ellen Matthews/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal /Getty Images

Brian Fellow is not an accredited zoologist, nor does he hold an advanced degree in any of the environmental sciences. He just loves animals, and they love him back. Tracy Morgan made “Brian Fellow’s Safari Planet” a long-running highlight, starting in 1999. He interviewed animals and their handlers, yet always ended up getting into arguments with the critters as well as the humans. When a parrot squawks “I am Brian Fellow,” he yells, “That bird is a liar!”

Best line: “The devil goat just smiled at me!”

Herb Welch

Image Credit: Dana Edelson/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank

Bill Hader revels in his nasty streak as veteran TV newsman Herb Welch, a crank who’s been on the air for six or seven decades, as his glasses get thicker and his fuse gets shorter. Herb is prone to temper tantrums, memory lapses, World War 2 flashbacks, bigotry, and smacking people in the face with his microphone. And sometimes dying.

Best line: “Don’t direct me, you tie rack!”

Sheila Sovage

Image Credit: Will Heath/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal/Getty Images

Kate McKinnon can do it all, from the Russian peasant Olya Povlatsky to the “Whiskers R We” cat queen Barbara DeDrew. But Sheila is one of her wildest creations—a boozy barfly at last call, slurping one more vodka cheddar before closing time. The guest star on the next barstool is the equally drunk stranger she’s about to approach for some sloppy tongue-kissing. It’s a tribute to McKinnon that she could make Sheila such an endearing mess.

Best line: “My liver is losing a joust to a knight by the name of Sir Rhosis.”

Mr. Bill

Image Credit: Fred Bronson/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal/Getty Images

A low-budget fan fave from the early days. In Season One, SNL asked viewers to send in their home movies, so a New Orleans fan named Walter Williams sent in a Super 8 reel of Mr. Bill, a cute claymation moppet emitting a high-pitched screech every time he got smooshed by his nemeses Mr. Hands and Sluggo. Long before Kenny on South Park, Mr. Bill was out there getting killed every week. The crude, homemade look of Mr. Bill reflected the early SNL attitude—definitely not ready for prime time.

Best line: “Oh nooooo!”

The “Dick in a Box” Guys

Image Credit: NBC

Look, it’s simple: (1) cut a hole in a box, (2) put your junk in that box, (3) make her open the box. And that’s the way you do it. Andy Samberg and Justin Timberlake became the ultimate Nineties R&B bromance crooning the Lonely Island slow jam “Dick in a Box,” stretching it out into two more classic Digital Shorts: “Motherlover” in 2009 and “3-Way (The Golden Rule)” in 2011.

Best line: “Oooh, my dick in a box, girl.”

The Sweeney Sisters

Image Credit: Alan Singer/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank

Jan Hooks and Nora Dunn were a late-Eighties hit as a cocktail-lounge sister act, singing show tunes and cheesy pop oldies. Liz and Candy Sweeney channel all their frustrated hopes and dreams into over-the-top medleys, even when they’re stuck playing the lobby of their local Holiday Inn. The Sweeney Sisters are weirdly obscure nowadays, partly because they were women in a male-dominated SNL era, but also because their medleys are a legal nightmare when it comes to clearing the rights. (Good luck finding them online.) But their 1989 farewell sketch with Mary Tyler Moore is a real banger.

Best line: “We’re the Sweeney Sisters! You must have pressed L for lobby!” 

Leonard Pinth-Garnell

Image Credit: Alan Singer/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty

Dan Aykroyd’s tuxedo-clad culture vulture, the host of the Bad Art series, including Bad Playhouse, Bad Ballet and Bad Opera. He brings his audience the very worst in contemporary performances, from the stage (“Voorstraat’s early plays dealt with ‘the existentialism of being’—difficult to understand because they were so very poorly written”) or screen (“tonight’s selected bad film really bites it”), while applauding with cries of “Awful! Awful! Couldn’t be worse!”

Best line: “There now — that wasn’t very good, was it?”

The Church Lady

Image Credit: R.M. Lewis Jr./NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal/Getty Images

What made Dana Carvey so phenomenally popular as the Church Lady? Could it be…Satan? The Church Lady helped save SNL’s bacon in the late Eighties, after Lorne Michael returned and had to rebuild the franchise from scratch. Most people figured the show was a decade past its heyday. But new cast member Carvey struck a nerve with the Church Lady, in the age of TV religious hucksters like Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. The character served as the cornerstone for a new SNL era. But for Carvey, it was just the beginning.

Best line: “Well, isn’t that special?”

Tommy Flanagan, the Pathological Liar

Image Credit: R.M. Lewis Jr./NBCU photobank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images

Jon Lovitz’s Pathological Liar basically saved the show. Yeah, that’s the ticket—he saved the network! Tommy Flanagan, the Liar, was the only sign of life in the nightmarish 1985-1986 season, with an all-new cast. This guy was the only character who made any impression, with one whopping lie after another. In the season finale, Lorne Michaels famously let the entire SNL set burn to the ground, but pulled Lovitz out of the fire as the lone survivor. He ended up playing Tommy Flanagan 19 times. Yeah—19 thousand times.

Best line: “I’m a member of Pathological Liars Anonymous. In fact, I’m the president of that organization!”

Tyrone Green

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Artist, poet and felon. Eddie Murphy introduced Tyrone Green in the “Prose and Cons” sketch about winning his prison’s literary festival with his poem “Kill My Landlord.” Has any SNL character ever made a bigger impact in under a minute? No. Tyrone went on to win acclaim for his conceptual art pieces like Rodney Johnson’s Bad Luck, which consists of Rodney Johnson’s possessions.

Best line: “Slip in the window, break his neck/Then his house I start to wreck/Got no reason — what the heck?/Kill my landlord.”

The “Bronx Beat” Ladies

The killer combo of Amy Poehler and Maya Rudolph. Betty and Jodi are two jaded moms from the Bronx, hosting a talk show even though they do not have time for this. They don’t got enough going on? Their kids, their lazy husbands, the way the city smells today? This whole world is bananas!

Best line: “You know what? When my husband brings fish into the house, I say, ‘Go have your other wife cook it. Go have Angelina Jolie cook it.’ That one, she drives me nuts.”

The Hippies

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Laraine Newman and Dan Aykroyd play a pair of Seventies hippie lovers—he’s Jason, her name wanders from Chloe to Sunshine to Sunset. Aykroyd and Newman were quite a bit younger than the rest of the original cast of Not Ready for Prime Time Players, so they were the ones who really knew the youth culture they were satirizing, and their hippie couple was strictly for the hardcore heads. They debuted in Season One, inviting a neighbor over to watch a slide show of their acid trip. They evolved into organic foodies with their Natural Causes Restaurant, serving dead seagulls (from the Santa Barbara oil slick) or insects (from the windshield of Jason’s van).

Best line: “Like today, the Kahoutek Special might be leg of lamb, because we have a sheep back in the kitchen that’s dying of anthrax.”

Jebidiah Atkinson

Image Credit: NBC

Taram Killam’s mega-bitch 1860s newspaper critic, inspired by a real-life journalist who wrote a negative review of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Jebidiah was an underrated but surefire guest appearing on Weekend Update in 19th-century garb, to take shots at movies (“You know what wasn’t on Schindler’s list? An editor!”), music (“To answer your question, Bono—without you”), and A Charlie Brown Christmas, sneering, “No one wants to watch neurotic children trudging in the snow to smooth jazz!”

Best line: “Cats? I’ve seen a less depressing play starring a hundred cats—it was called Hoarders.”

The Ex-Porn Stars

Vanessa Bayer and Cecily Strong play a pair of former porn stars making their own ads for luxury brands, in the hopes they’ll score some free swag. They gush about “spectaculance” and “indeligance” while playing with their hair and rambling about their sexual adventures. Why do they talk that way? “I fell off a really steep boner and banged my head.”

Best line: “I tried to bang a quiet guy, but it was just a corpse. I was like, hey, it’s your funeral. And his family was like, yes it is — now get out of the coffin.”

The Blues Brothers

Image Credit: Al Levine/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal/Getty Images

Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi as two brothers on a mission from God: to play the blues. Joliet Jake Blues and his silent brother Elwood became massively popular in their matching black suits and Wayfarer shades, reviving classic R&B oldies like “Hey Bartender” or “Soul Man.” They were the musical guests on the all-time most acclaimed SNL episodes, the 4/22/78 classic with Steve Martin. Jake and Elwood didn’t do sketches—just showmanship and cool. But the duo took the characters much further on a Number One album, Briefcase Full of Blues, as well as one of the funniest SNL movies ever. (Obviously, they’d rank way higher on this list if we were counting the movie.)

Best line: “Honey, I gave up cigarettes for my New Year’s resolution, but I didn’t give up smoking!”

Onski

Image Credit: Raymond Bonar/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank

Chris Rock’s first breakout character, the homeboy host of I’m Chillin’! Onski brings you his show live from the Marcy projects, sponsored by 168th Street Spring Water (“the only spring water that comes directly from a fire hydrant”) or Bitch Come Running cologne. Hip-hop humor was new to SNL, to say the least, so Onski usually got pushed to the final ten minutes. But he always rolled out a big intro for Chris Farley as his pal B-Fats. “Sitting by my side, my main man, my ace in the hole, my New Jersey toll, my Esther Rolle, my ten-foot pole, my Billy Joel, my Nat King Cole, my Dead Sea Scroll, my Dr. Scholl, my Helmut Kohl, my grassy knoll, my Kid Creole, my La! Cage! Aux! Folles!”

Best line: “Your mother got so much hair under her arm, it looks like she got Buckwheat in a headlock.”

The “Delicious Dish” hosts

Image Credit: Mary Ellen Matthews/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty

Mmmm — good times. Margaret Jo McCullen (Ana Gasteyer) and Teri Rialto (Molly Shannon) host NPR’s “Delicious Dish,” all passive-aggressive tension under their mild-mannered voices. They shared their finest moment with Alec Baldwin, their mouths watering at the sight of his Schweddy Balls.

Best line: “I can’t help but notice, Pete — your Balls are a little misshapen.”

The Master Thespian

Image Credit: Al Levine/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty

Only Jon Lovitz could create this over-the-top ham, dedicated to the pursuit of “Acting!” A highlight of the late Eighties SNL, the Master Thespian earns most of his applause in his own mind, striking flamboyant poses in a smoking jacket and gushing about the actor’s craft.

Best line: “The face of death is near — and so, I flail.”

The Nerds: Lisa Loopner and Todd Di La Muca

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Gilda Radner and Bill Murray as a couple of high-school nerds in love, Lisa Loopner and Todd Di La Muca. Talk about a rarity: the Nerds were a sweetly affectionate couple on SNL, trading noogies and cornball quips like “That’s so funny I forgot to laugh.” The legendary writer Anne Beatts made Lisa and Todd a warm-up for the teen humor of her classic Eighties cult sitcom Square Pegs. Radner and Murray were a real-life couple, yet tempestuous as their offscreen relationship was, the Nerds were genuinely touching.

Best line: “Let’s not and say we did.”

Target Lady

Image Credit: Dana Edelson/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal/Getty Images

Kristen Wiig played so many terrifying characters, but none so intense as the Target Lady. This manic, chatty, unfiltered cashier bonds with her customers, ridiculously excited about whatever ordinary goods they’re buying, until they end up totally traumatized. (So did many viewers—she was one of the most divisive characters of her era.) Wiig ended up reviving the role for actual Target ads.

Best line: “I wear nose plugs around the house when my neighbor cooks broccoli.”

Velvet Jones

Image Credit: Fred Hermansky/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty

Velvet Jones was one of Eddie Murphy’s original star-making characters, the founder of the Velvet Jones School of Technology, offering career courses on how to be a pimp or touting his book I Wanna Be a Ho. (“You get to meet new people, travel, wear nice clothes, make money, and have lots and lots of sex.”) He also sponsors his own line of Velvet Jones romance novels: “When she touched her lips to the glass, LaWanda’s heart beat inside her. I knew from that very first moment the three dollars I had spent on wine would not go to waste.”

Best line: “If you order now, I’ll throw in absolutely free this pamphlet called 12 Easy Ways to Stomp a Ho.”

Emily Litella

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Gilda Radner, always the heart of SNL. She appeared 26 times as Emily Litella, a character she based on her childhood nanny, who was hard of hearing. Emily was a sweet old lady in a cardigan and frump glasses, ranting about topics she got a bit wrong. She spoke out on “endangered feces,” “violins on television,” conserving this country’s “national racehorses,” and “presidential erections.” (When Gilda guest-starred on The Muppet Show, Emily complained about being on a “muffin show.”) A perfect example of how much comedy Gilda could squeeze out of one simple joke, based on pure charisma and verve.

Best line: “Never mind.”

Theodoric of York

Image Credit: NBC

Steve Martin’s horrifying medieval doctor, treating his patients with leeches or boar’s vomit. He smiles as he tells Bill Murray, “You’ll feel better after a good bleeding.” And sweeping up in his office: Broom Gilda.

Best line: “Just 50 years ago, they thought a disease like your daughter’s was caused by demonic possession or witchcraft. But nowadays, we know that Isabel is suffering from an imbalance of bodily humors — perhaps caused by a toad or a small dwarf living in her stomach.”

Buckwheat

Image Credit: Alan Singer/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal/Getty Images

Eddie Murphy based Buckwheat on the old-school Our Gang kiddie movie shorts from the Thirties and Forties, which were constantly in TV reruns. (Murphy grew up memorizing them.) But he flipped Buckwheat into a whole new character: a kid star grown up into a misfit man-child, twisting white America’s queasiest racial stereotypes, with an album called Buh-weet Sings. Murphy got tired of the character fast, but he went out with a bang, in the classic episode where he gets assassinated by John David Stutts, whose classmates voted him “Most Likely to Kill Buckwheat.”

Best line: “Hi, I’m Buckwheat, amemba me?”

The Continental

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The skeeviest of lotharios, played by regular guest Christopher Walken, leering into the camera to address the viewer. Or undress the viewer, purring, “Forgive me if my hungry eyes feast on the banquet of your sumptuous decolletage.” Based on a Fifties TV series, the Continental was a highlight whenever Walken hosted, offering a glass of champagne, or “sham-pan-ya.” Possibly the creepiest dudeWalken ever played.

Best line: “The champagne-a you have thrown in my face stings my eyes. You are a fiery vixen.”

The Girl You Wish You Hadn’t Started a Conversation with at a Party

Image Credit: Will Heath/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal/Getty Images

Open your eyes, people! Hunger, racism, small businesses—it’s like, maybe DON’T?” Cecily Strong created a self-absorbed party-girl drama queen most of us can relate to—probably because there’s a little bit of her in all of us. The Girl You Wish You Hadn’t Started a Conversation with at a Party spouts incoherent rants like “why can’t Secret Santa just be openly gay?” or “people who are orphans are twice as likely to not have parents,” while waving to friends, digging in her purse, looking at her phone.

Best line: “Aaah-chooo! Oh, sorry Seth—I must be allergic to indifference.”

Bill Swerski’s Superfans

Image Credit: Raymond Bonar/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty Images

A round table of Chicago dudes in matching walrus mustaches and sunglasses, raising their beer mugs in praise of Da Bears, Da Bulls, and especially Mike Ditka. Robert Smigel, Chris Farley, Mike Myers, and George Wendt summed up the devout passion of sports fans, gorging on bratwurst and pork chops, while fighting the occasional heart attack. Beth Cahill was always welcome as Bill’s daughter Denise Swerski, Miss Southside of Chicago. Their authentically nasal accents were rare on network TV at the time. The Superfans began appearing in person as a regular part of Bulls victory celebrations.

Best line: “What’s God’s role in all this? Obviously, he’s rooting for Da Bears.”

The Coneheads

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Dan Aykroyd got the idea for the Coneheads on a trip to Easter Island with John Belushi, marveling at the Moai statues of giant heads.  Aykroyd, Jane Curtin, and Laraine Newman were the Coneheads, a family of aliens from the planet Remulak, hiding out in suburban Middle America, trying to fit in as ordinary people. If anyone raised an eyebrow at their odd habits or robotic speech, the Coneheads just claimed they were from France. They really killed it on Family Feud.

Best line: “Good morning, parental units.”

Gene Frenkle

Image Credit: Dana Edelson/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty

Will Ferrell’s cowbell king, rocking in the studio with Blue Oyster Cult and performing the hell out of “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper.” The “More Cowbell” sketch was all Ferrell needed to make Gene an instant folk hero—the way his shirt ascends to expose his jiggling paunch is true mastery. Bonus points for not trying to milk Gene Frenkle into a recurring bit—although when Ferrell hosted SNL in 2005, Gene came out to jam with musical guests Queens of the Stone Age. He really knew how to explore the studio space.

Best line: “If Bruce Dickinson wants more cowbell, we should probably give him more cowbell!”

David S. Pumpkins

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Tom Hanks introduced this character in October 2016, just in time for Halloween, but David S. Pumpkins became such a hit that he’s never gone away. The Halloween mascot was profoundly creepazoidal in his black-and-white pumpkin suit, dancing between two skeletons. Hanks thought the character might be too freaky for him at first, but he earned an Emmy nomination for this role—he even got his own animated David S. Pumpkins Halloween Special. Any questions?

Best line: “I’m David Pumpkins, and I’m gonna scare the hell out of you.”

Mindy Grayson

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Kristen Wiig is the woman of a thousand faces, but her most enduringly brilliant character is Mindy, a marvelously emphathetic portrait of an over-the-hill Broadway diva. She’s a regular guest on the Seventies game show Secret Word, except she’d rather gush about her triumphs in productions like Juicy Boots of 1961 and “the unnecessary revival of the play The Incoherence of Miss Tiffany.” Like so many Wiig characters, she’s totally delusional, yet in a way that makes you root for her.

Best line: “Bob Fosse said the same thing to me in the smash failure Wigwam Suzy and the Corn Maize Crew, the story of a Native American girl who slept her way up to a two-room teepee.”

Operaman

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Adam Sandler’s prima donna, wearing a tux to sing mock arias about the news events of the day, from John Wayne Bobbit (“donde es schlongo?”) to Pearl Jam (“Nirvana kissa my assa”), occasionally blubbering into his handkerchief. Operaman was a key figure in SNL’s early-Nineties renaissance. And quite possibly the finest use of Sandler’s musical skills.

Best line: “La chiefa policia, no dispatcha gendarme, morono, no respondo, no excusa, bagga doucha!”

Miss Colleen Rafferty

Image Credit: Will Heath/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal/Getty Images

Kate McKinnon had so many unforgettable moments, but she knocked it out of the park with the chain-smoking Colleen Rafferty, describing her alien abduction experiences. She has a long history of close encounters with extraterrestrials, but they always seem to involve her nicknames for her nether regions, such as “my cooter and my tooter,” “my grassy knoll and my gassy hole,” or “my baby tunnel and my gravy funnel.”

Best line: “I land ass on a pool raft with my pink pocket and my stink rocket on full display.”

Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer

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Nobody could top Phil Hartman when it comes to slick-talking con men in suits. As the Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer, he now seems like a template for the Republicans of the 21st century.

Best line: “I’m just a caveman. I fell on some ice and later got thawed out by scientists. But there is one thing I do know. We must do everything in our power to lower the capital gains tax. Thank you!”

Nat X

Image Credit: NBC

Chris Rock didn’t get much airtime in his early SNL run, but he killed every time he fought his way onto the show, and he really made his mark with Nat X, the dashiki-rocking militant host of The Dark Side. He’s the man so Black he goes to funerals naked, so Black they counted him four times in the Million Man March. Nat rails against the Man and institutions like chess, “a game that for some racist reason cannot start unless the white piece moves first.” He always counts down his Top 5 list—because the Man’s afraid to let him have a Top 10.

Best line: “February is Black History Month—isn’t that nice? The Man gives us February because it’s the shortest month of the year. It’s also the coldest month of the year, just in case we wanted to have a parade.”

The Samurai

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The ultimate explosion of John Belushi’s anarchic energy—he waves his samurai sword, he grunts, he screams, he chops up everything in sight. The Samurai appears in many different guises—a deli owner, a stockbroker, a psychiatrist, a mob hit man. And he hits the dance floor in “Samurai Night Fever,” where his brother gets played by O.J. Simpson. (Oh, those innocent Seventies.) Belushi used a real sword, resulting in actual bloodshed. One night he accidentally slashed host Buck Henry’s forehead open with his katana sword, live on the air. For the rest of the show, the cast wore Band-Aids on their foreheads.

Best line: “Yeeeeh-aaaaiiiigh!”

Linda Richman

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Linda Richman was all America’s Jewish mother, hosting Coffee Talk to discuss Barbra Streisand, or anything else that makes her verklempt. No big whoop. Mike Myers based this fabulous yenta on his real-life mother-in-law, making her so famous that she wrote her own Nineties self-help book. Few SNL characters have ever been so quotable, with her New York accent and Yiddish asides (“Talk amongst yourselves!”) That episode where Linda’s on the couch with Madonna and Rosanne Barr, raving about Barbra—and then Barbra herself shows up? SNL’s all-time best “sneaker upper” gag.

Best line: “She has legs to die for. They’re like buttah! The left one is salted, and the right one is courtesy of Land O’ Lakes.”

The Wild and Crazy Guys

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Steve Martin and Dan Aykroyd bonded as the Festrunk brothers, two Czech immigrants ready to party it up in their new American bachelor pad, because they were two wild and crazy guys. Yortuk and Georg were dressed for the Seventies singles bars, with gold chains, jaunty caps, and unbuttoned shirts, on the prowl for “swinging foxes.” But they kept their boyish charm, thanks to writer Marilyn Suzanne Miller. Martin became the first regular guest with his own recurring star character, as he and Aykroyd did their wiggly walk in perfect sync.

Best line: “Bring on the foxes!”

Gumby

Image Credit: Alan Singer/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal/Getty Images

Eddie Murphy loved to root around in the archives of long-forgotten trash TV to find the raw material for brand new characters. He took Gumby from an old 1950s kiddie series, but he didn’t imitate the original. Instead of a lovable claymation creature, this Gumby was a cranky, cigar-chomping, potty-mouthed show-biz hack, grown old and bitter. Murphy was barely out of his teens, but already fascinated by the down side of the dirty business of dreams.

Best line: “I’m Gumby, dammit!”

Dieter

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Another brilliant Mike Myers creation: the black-clad German host of Sprockets, inviting his guests to touch his monkey as he raves about Berlin art-scene highlights like “Scabs on Canvas” and the Wall of Unhappiness. Dieter always ends by declaring, “This is the time on Sprockets when we dance!” In one segment, he interviews Dana Carvey’s Jimmy Stewart about his book of poetry, confessing, “That poem pulls down my pants and taunts me.” Like everything else Myers did on SNL, Dieter got imitated to death, but the original can’t be topped—his impact, as Dieter would say, was like a cultural Chernobyl.

Best line: “Your presence intimidates me to the point of humiliation. Would you care to strike me?”

Stuart Smalley

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The host of “Daily Affirmations,” a caring nurturer and a member of several 12-step programs—but not a licensed therapist. Al Franken dispensed wisdom like “compare and despair” or “denial ain’t just a river in Egypt,” in a bold crusade against stinking thinking. In his most classic moment, he gives Michael Jordan (“I’ll call him Michael J. to preserve his anonymity”) a pep talk on self-esteem. How surreal to see MJ look into the mirror and say and say along with Stuart, “I don’t have to dribble the ball fast, or throw the ball into the basket.”

Best line: “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it—people like me!”

Nick the Lounge Singer

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The velvet song stylings of Bill Murray. For all his schmaltz, Murray put real heart and soul into this crooner — no matter how miserable the dump where he’s singing, he wants to win the audience’s love, one rendition of the Star Wars theme at a time.

Best line: “Welcome to the Powder Room, everybody up here at beautiful Meatloaf Mountain. I’m Nick Winters and I’m here to entertain you. So sit back, have a hot buttered rum and let it happen.”

Matt Foley

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Chris Farley had a hundred different moves for hitching up his pants, and he got to use them all as Matt Foley, the maniacal motivational speaker who rants, “I am 35 years old, I am divorced, and I live in a van down by the river!” Farley and Bob Odenkirk created him in the Second City troupe, but he was an instant hit on SNL, appearing 8 times. The first time he showed up in 1993, he terrorized David Spade and Christina Applegate, warning that they might end up like him if they keep on rollin’ doobies. As Linda Richman might say: Neither motivational nor a speaker? Discuss!

Best line: “Well, la-de-freakin’-da!”

Irwin Mainway

Image Credit: Mary Ellen Matthews/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty

Dan Aykroyd always specialized in two-bit American sleazebags, from the Bass-O-Matic salesman to Richard Nixon. But toy tycoon Irving Mainway is the archetypal Aykroyd hustler, and the ultimate showcase for his genius. In the early seasons of SNL, Mainway kept showing up on Consumer Probe to defend his horribly dangerous children’s toys, including “Bag O’ Glass,” “Teddy Chainsaw Bear,” “Mr. Skin Grafter,” and “General Trahn’s Secret Police Confession Kit.” But he refused to admit there was anything unsafe about Mainway Toys goodies like the Pretty Peggy Ear-Piercing Set. He sold Halloween costumes like “Johnny Human Torch”—a pile of oily rags and a lighter. He also ran the amusement park Kiddie Funworld, featuring rides like the Ice Palace (a bunch of abandoned refrigerators) and the Tunnel of Noxious Gases.

Best line: “Look, we put a label on every bag that says, ‘Kid! Be careful—broken glass!’ I mean, we sell a lot of products in the Bag O’ line, like Bag O’ Glass, Bag O’ Nails, Bag O’ Bugs, Bag O’ Vipers, Bag O’ Sulfuric Acid.” 

Debbie Downer

Image Credit: Dana Edelson/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty

Rachel Dratch’s buzzkill goddess travels everywhere from Disney World to Las Vegas, but she always brings that sad trombone music with her. A birthday party, a wedding, a bachelorette party—you can always count on Debbie Downer to ruin the fun by bringing up feline AIDS (“it’s the number one killer of domestic cats!”) or the latest earthquakes.

Best line: “By the way, it’s official—they’ve located my birth mother. Deceased.”

Mr. Robinson

Image Credit: Alan Singer/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty

Can you say “scum bucket,” boys and girls? Mr. Robinson was no mere parody of Mr. Rogers—Eddie Murphy created a whole new character, a criminal-minded charmer with a streak of rage lurking behind a sweet smile for the kiddies out there, in his battle against Mr. Landlord. Mr. Robinson was the perfect vehicle for Murphy’s live-wire intensity, making him stand out from everything and everyone around him, especially in the disastrous reboot era after Lorne and the original cast left. But as soon as Murphy introduced Mr. Robinson in October 1981, he blew the rest of the show right off the screen.

Best line: “You know where drums come from? Africa! You know where these drums come from? Smokey Robinson was at the Apollo Theater and left his van open.”

Wayne and Garth

Image Credit: Alan Singer/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty

Mike Myers created the all-American party-commando hero. Wayne might be just a suburban metal kid hosting a public-access cable show in his mom’s basement, “Wayne’s World.” But he’s a rock star in his dreams. With him, as always, Dana Carvey as his loyal sidekick Garth. They were SNL at its best—the warmest, funniest, realest friendship in the show’s history, whether making out with Madonna or debating the future of socialism with Aerosmith. Coolest SNL spin-off movie ever, too. Party on, Wayne. Party on, Garth.

Best line: “Garth, get it together, man. Because if you hurl, and I catch a whiff of it, I’m gonna spew. And if I blow chunks, chances are someone else is gonna honk, all right? And that’s gonna set off a peristaltic chain reaction, all right?”

Stefon

Image Credit: SNL

Oh Stefon—more fun than a date with Tranderson Cooper. Bill Hader created an SNL legend with Stefon, the dazed Chelsea club kid who raves about the latest parties, dropping names like Gaye Dunaway, Blowjay Simpson, or “lazily named drag queen Melvin in a Dress.” As Hader told Rolling Stone, he based Stefon on the zonked-out party monsters he saw on the L train every Sunday morning on his way home to Brooklyn after SNL cast parties. His friend John Mulaney famously loved to surprise him with new jokes on the cue cards, trying to make Hader crack up on the air. (It usually worked.) But Stefon is beloved for his unkillable child-like enthusiasm. No matter what kind of hellhole he’s in, Stefon always believes this party has everything. An inspiration to us all.

Best line: “This place has everything: geeks, sherpas, a Jamaican nurse wearing a shower cap, room after room of broken mirrors. Look over there—is that Mick Jagger? No! It’s a fat kid on a Slip & Slide. His knees look like biscuits and he’s ready to party!”

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