It's hard to believe that one of the most basic joke constructions got its start on Saturday Night Live, but that's exactly the case with "not!"
The joke made its formal debut in a famous 1990 "Wayne's World" sketch featuring cast members Mike Myers and Dana Carvey and host Tom Hanks. At one point, Myers turned to Hanks and said, "Anyways, Barry, that was really interesting," before looking into the camera and adding, "not!"
The joke turned into one of the sketch's many catchphrases, and had such staying power that "Not!" was named the American Dialect Society's Word of the Year in 1992.
Before that sketch, the word had floated around in the vernacular of UCLA college students in the late 1980s, according to the Orlando Sentinel, and before that, Steve Martin had ad-libbed a similar line in a 1978 SNL sketch.
But we can thank "Wayne's World" for bringing the "not" joke into the mainstream, and for inspiring one of the more memorable scenes in "Borat" history.