The 15 Best SNL Characters in Nearly 50 Years of Saturday Night Live

Of course comedy is subjective. So if you feel that we missed some of the best SNL characeters, let us know in the comments. Maybe we did.

Also: When we’re talking about characters who are part of a duo or group, like the Bronx Beat ladies, we’re only counting them once. And we’re counting original characters, not impersonations. And, finally, we’re going in roughly chronological order.

OK, let’s go…

Gilda Radner was Saturday Night Live‘s heart in the early years, and concerned citizen Emily Latella is our favorite of her many outstanding characters — several of whom could have easily made this list of the best SNL characters of the last nearly five decades since the show’s 1975 debut.

Emily’s routine never gets old. She latches on to some upsetting piece of news while visiting the Weekend Update desk, commits completely to a denunciation of it — and soon realizes she just misunderstood something.

We’ve all done it, but most people don’t have the grace to just own it with Emily’s catch phrase: “I’m sorry. Nevermind.”

John Belushi is so famous for being a wildman that people forget what an excellent actor he was. His range was especially clear with his Japanese Samurai character, who, like several of the best SNL characters, would never fly today.

Still, a white actor playing a Japanese icon is only the first level of absurdity in the samurai sketches, in which Belushi’s honorable and sincere Toshiro Mifune-influenced samurai worked a series of normal jobs.

The weirdest and our favorite of the Samurai sketches is “Samurai Night Fever,” in which Belushi plays a cross between the already out there samurai character and John Travolta’s Saturday Night Fever character. Adding to the mind-bending madness is O.J. Simpson playing a character who doesn’t want to be Black.

The wild and crazy Czech-born Festruck brothers, Yortuk (Dan Aykroyd) and Georg (Steve Martin), had a wide-eyed disco-era love of America, and their awkward attempts to assimilate into the culture are impossibly endearing.

So are their malapropisms, catch phrases, and oddly gentlemanly approaching to inviting “foxes” back to their “swinging bachelor pad.”

One thing that makes them some of the best SNL characters is that they aren’t making fun of Czech expatriates — they’re making fun of the vanities of 1970s Americans.

Yes, we said no impersonations, but Eddie Murphy so reinvented Gumby that he’s basically a new character with no resemblance to the clay children’s entertainer: Murphy plays him as a washed-up, cigar-chomping showbiz crank whose best days are long behind him.

Eddie Murphy was one of the few highlights of the awkward years after SNL creator Lorne Michaels and the original Not Ready for Primetime Players departed the show, and Gumby was one of his many brilliant, meta riffs on the dark side of the entertainment industry. See also: Buckwheat.

Is Eddie Murphy the all-time strongest cast member? You could definitely make that case. He’s certainly responsible for several contenders for the best SNL characters of all time.

Another candidate for the all-time greatest SNL cast member, Carvey thrived with goodhearted, fiercely insightful, magnificently observed character work.

We all know a church lady. She’s a non-denominational bully, who uses the gospels to judge us for all eternity. Yet we also kind of admire her? She is who she is and makes no apologies, and we have to admit, she’s very quick with a zinger.

When Lorne Michaels returned to SNL in the mid-80s, it was Carvey’s Church Lady — joined by Phil Hartman and Jan Hooks — who signaled that the show might be ready to return to the ensemble greatness of its early days. And it did. Carvey’s era may be our favorite in the whole history of the show. It included several of the best SNL characters.

Kevin Nealon has said the Hans and Franz began when he watched an Arnold Schwarzenegger interview on TV and called Dana Carvey to tune in. The breakthrough moment was when they decided that for all their braggadocio about reducing flab, they would never be seen lifting weights.

The characters were so beloved that Conan O’Brien, Robert Smigel, Carvey and Nealon once devised a Hans and Franz movie that would have prominently featured Schwarzenegger, but the action star was too busy for his cousins.

Fortunately, the comedians recently gathered together to read their script for O’Brien’s podcast.

Phil Hartman was always known as “the glue” by his fellow SNL players for his ability to perform just about any role and hold sketches together. His specialty was flat-out excellent, nuanced acting. But as Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer, he finally got to lean into a big, ridiculous, brilliantly bizarre character.

What elevates him to one of the best SNL characters is that instead of focusing on the freakishness of Keyrock, Hartman plated him as wordly, cynical and kind of bored — Keyrock merely takes advantage of his unfrozen status, and people’s low expectations, to convince jurors that he’s just “a simple caveman.”

Yes, Hartman is another contender for the all-time greatest SNL cast members.

No way? Way. Hard-rocking Aurora, Illinois teens Wayne (Myers) and Garth (Carvey) may be the most profitable of all SNL characters — the first Wayne World film was a massive hit, and follow-up Wayne’s World 2 also did quite respectful business.

We loved them for their unbridled love of rock — but also for their surprising sensitivity and knowledge of history. Wayne’s World was at its most Wayne’s World when Wayne interrogated the members of Aerosmith about the state of communism in Eastern Europe.

Sure, Garth is the leader of the duo, but Garth subtly steals our hearts, time after time. We love that Carvey has said he based him in part on his brother, Brad.

The first Matt Foley sketch may be the single best SNL sketch ever: As a hoarse motivational speaker who famously lives in a van down by the river, Chris Farley delivers one of the most committed, riveting SNL performances.

Besides making us laugh, Farley’s Foley managed to score sympathy and even… respect?

We learned this week that we have Christina Applegate — who is great in the sketch, even as she tries to hold it together — to thank for getting it on the air.

And of course, Farley is another contender for the all-time greatest SNL cast member. And Matt Foley, who returned repeatedly, may be near No. 1 on the list of the best SNL characters.

We’re confident that many people reading this list are saying “Lionel who?” And that’s exactly how Lionel probably likes it. Played to bone-dry perfection by Tim Meadows, he is a man muddling through his job hosting a public affairs talk show called Perspectives. He knows he’s fulfilling a quota and either happy to take the check without rocking any boats — or performing a stunning bit of protest art. We will never know.

Perspectives airs in the 4:50 a.m. time slot in order to just barely fulfill a local New York station’s “community programming requirement.” Lionel fills the show’s seven-minute runtime by frequently reintroducing himself and his guests, asking vacant questions while smoothly dodging anything interesting or useful, and being generally frustrating.

He is, to us, the most haunting of the best SNL characters: The Perspectives sketches refuse to tell us anything about his origins or motivations. While we strongly suspect Lional is phoning it in as a quiet, brilliant protest of the station’s lack of commitment to authentic public affairs programming, Meadows gives away nothing. Fan-tastic.

If you’ve ever seen a Sally O’Malley sketch, you’re probably well aware that she’s 50 — 50 years old. It’s a core part of her branding. It sounded old to us when we were young, but as we get older, we admire Sally’s gumption — and kicks — more and more.

A lot of Molly Shannon characters could be on this list of the best SNL characters, but the irrepressible Sally O’Malley is our favorite. She still has the grace and grit of an athlete-dancer half her age.

Maybe our favorite subtle detail about the Sally O’Malley sketches is that she’s never the butt of the joke — all her boasts are proven to be true.

Remember when it was possible to give driving directions without someone making a Californians joke? These stone-cold classic characters have injected a lot of phrases into our daily speak, including “It’s gonna be jammed!” and “What are you doing here?” Actually, they’re just so fun to say in the Californians voice that we kind of jam them into conversations.

Few things amuse us as much as these weird soap opera parodies starring Stuart (Fred Armisen), Karina (Kristen Wiig), and Devin (Bill Hader) — as well as recurring characters Trey (Kenan Thompson) and Rosa (Vanessa Bayer).

What are we doing here? Laughing.

This is another Church Lady situation — you know someone like the Bronx Beat ladies, whether you live in the Bronx or the South or Phoenix. They’re the gossipy, cynical, salt-of-the-earth middle-aged moms who make the world go round.

Maya Rudolph and Amy Poehler’s Jodi and Betty are full of wisdom on motherhood, marriage, and dress codes — as when they provided gentle counseling for local library volunteer Maureen Diccico (Katy Perry).

The ladies get through their harried lives with street-smart wisdom, very realistic expectations, and — most of all — friendship. They’re among the most grounded, believable and beloved of the best SNL characters.

If there’s anyone who made castmates break more than Chris Farley, it’s Rachel Dratch as Debbie Downer. No list of the best SNL characters is complete without her.

Her Dratch’s perfect commitment to Debbie Downer, who can find the gray behind any silver lining, makes her one of the most timeless of all best SNL characters of all. She’s even miserable at Disney World.

Spend five seconds on social media and you’ll find a flock of Debbie Downers who can put a negative, bad faith spin on any situation. But none of them make us laugh the way poor Debbie does.

SNL has moved away from recurring, catch-phrase-driven characters over the years, and Tom Hanks’ David S. Pumpkins marked a kind of departure from that approach — he’s a meta commentary on one-note recurring characters.

A constantly evolving, poorly fleshed-out parade of Halloween hackery, he’s poorly defined by the ultimate low-effort catch phrase: “Any questions?”

Mikey Day and Bobby Moynihan are just as much a part of the character’s success as Tom Hanks, given how enthusiastically their skeleton B-boys have to sell the whole thing. Of course the uncomfortable vaguely sexual overtones are “part of it.”

He’s one of the best SNL characters while being kind of above the whole concept of characters.

You might also enjoy this list of the Greatest SNL Sketches of All Time. According to us, at least.

And if you disagree with anything on this list of the best SNL characters, isn’t that special. But also, let us know in the comments.

Editor’s Note: Corrects typos, headline, and Wild and Crazy Guys entry.