‘SNL’ Accused of Ripping off Charmin Toilet Paper Bear Sketch

Saturday Night Live was once again accused of plagiarizing a creator’s sketch. During this weekend’s Season 48 premiere, the long-running NBC series included a sketch featuring parodies of the Charmin toilet paper bears. It was one of the highlights of the rocky episode, but it turned out to be very similar to a sketch filmmaker Joel Haver published on YouTube in July.

In the sketches, the parents’ son wants to do something more than just clean his behind with soft toilet paper. They dream of going into musical theater and becoming dancers, and they both shock their father. The SNL sketch goes on a bit longer than Haver’s animated film, showing the father eventually convinced to allow his son to study dancing after he shows off his moves with a friend.

Haver’s fans thought something was up with the SNL sketch. Many ran to a subreddit devoted to the filmmaker and wondered if they all thought the same thing. “Totally stole it. And SNL has a long track record of stealing sketches, so I never give them benefit of the doubt with this stuff. Unreal,” one fan wrote. “Yeah, they plagiarized worse than me in 10th grade,” another commented.

A few SNL viewers also called out the show on Twitter. “F— SNL for stealing its Charmin sketch from [Haver],” one viewer tweeted. “Was enjoying the episode, but that immediately soured it. They really need to stop stealing sketches-they’ve been doing it for decades with no consequences. Ridiculous.” Haver has not responded to the Twitter users calling him out.

In the cases where SNL has been accused of plagiarism in the past, the sketches are usually years old and from comedians who may not be well known nationally. This case is different because Haver’s sketch is less than four months old. Haver also has a huge following, with over 1.68 million YouTube subscribers, 21,000 Twitter followers, and over 35,000 Instagram followers. Haver’s own Charmin bears sketch has over 1.38 million views. Haver also drew attention just last month when he pulled one of his feature films from the web.

Last year, comedian Ted Alexandro called out SNL for turning one of his stand-up bits about couples sexting by sending each other Zillow listings into a Zillow commercial sketch. In 2019, New York comedians Nick Rugga and Ryan Hoffman told Variety two of their sketches were plagiarized by SNL, and they even hired a lawyer who sent a letter to NBC. In 2017, Tig Notaro’s fans noted that a sketch was similar to her 2015 short film Clown Service.

In September 2020, Twitch streamer William “Willneff” Neff claimed he applied to SNL with a sketch he wrote and performed. He claimed that the sketch made it to the show “verbatim,” even though they turned him down. In December 2020, comedian Francis Ellis claimed the SNL sketch “December to Remember Car Commercial” was ripped from a tweet he published days before the sketch aired.

SNL airs Saturdays at 11:30 p.m. ET on NBC. Brendan Gleeson hosts the Oct. 8 episode with Willow Smith as musical guest. Megan Thee Stallion will host and perform during the Oct. 15 episode. SNL is also available to stream on Peacock.