The 50 Best ‘Saturday Night Live’ Characters of All Time

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.”

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 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!”

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 II flashbacks, bigotry, and smacking people in the face with his microphone. And sometimes dying.Best line: “Don’t direct me, you tie rack!”

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.”

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!”

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.”

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!” 

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?”

What made Dana Carvey so phenomenally popular as the Church Lady? Could it be… Satan? The Church Lady helped resuscitate SNL in the late Eighties, after Lorne Michaels 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 chord 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. And for Carvey, it was just the beginning.Best line: “Well, isn’t that special?”

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 on the audience, 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!”

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? 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 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.”

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.”

Taram Killam’s megabitch 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.”

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.”

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 episode, 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!”

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 10 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 10-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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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 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 12Easy Ways to Stomp aHo.”

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.”

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 50years 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.”

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 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 dude Walken ever played.Best line: “The sham-pan-ya you have thrown in my face stings my eyes. You are a fiery vixen.”

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

A roundtable 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 South Side of Chicago. Their authentically nasal accents were rare on network TV at the time. The Superfans grew so beloved they 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.”

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.”

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!”

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.”

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.”

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!”

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.”

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!”

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 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 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.”