Editing Late Night with Conan O'Brien (section)

===Humor===
The show was known for its wacky and absurd sophomoric comedic sensibility that is edgier than most other talk shows. Like his ''Late Night'' predecessor, David Letterman, the show's humor also had a streak of biting sarcasm and irony. According to [[Robert Smigel]], who served as head writer in 1993, the show's comedic approach was to focus on being different from David Letterman:

{{blockquote|I set down a lot of rules, some of which were crazy, but ultimately it forced us to come up with a lot of original stuff. We had the added bonus of being Letterman's replacement.}}

Typically O'Brien would play the 'straight man' role to the general absurdity of the comedy, treating the material or wacky nature of the sketches with sincerity. The show had an unusual quantity of comedy and original content rather than other talk shows such as ''[[Late Show with David Letterman]]'' or ''[[The Tonight Show with Jay Leno]]'' that relied heavily on recurring segments and 'found' humor. The show was particularly unique in the lack of 'found' humor to derive content from i.e. most content being scripted as opposed to Letterman's Small Town News or Jay Leno's headlines that used this "found humor". O'Brien would often playfully chide his audience for an underwhelming or overly enthusiastic response to his jokes.

Particularly in the early years, comedic sketches overtook all segments on the show, occasionally even interrupting guest interviews and O'Brien's monologue. Frequently sketches would randomly begin without introduction, such as during banter between Richter and O'Brien. A lot of the humor had a fantasy-like quality to it, where inanimate objects would talk or silly characters would disrupt the show. Sometimes a short story would emerge in these sketches with a resolution culminating in a song.

One recurring technique is to superimpose lips onto an existing image, as in the [[Syncro-Vox]] [[limited animation]] technique, resulting in the speaker saying things often quite out of character.

Although ''Late Night'' used political humor, it did so far less frequently than competing shows did. During the 1996 and 2000 presidential election seasons, ''Late Night'' was found to be the least politically oriented late night program. It averaged 310 political jokes per election season, in contrast to the Leno-led ''Tonight Show'' with 1,275.<ref name="SantaAna">{{cite journal |last1=Santa Ana |first1=Otto |title=Did You Call in Mexican? The Racial Politics of Jay Leno Immigrant Jokes |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40207913 |journal=Language in Society |year=2009 |volume=38 |issue=1 |pages=23–45 |doi=10.1017/S0047404508090027 |jstor=40207913 |s2cid=145777390 |access-date=25 October 2021}}</ref>

(See [[List of Late Night with Conan O'Brien sketches|List of ''Late Night with Conan O'Brien'' sketches]] for an extensive list)