They had first met while at Chicago's the Second City comedy club, remaining together as cast members on the inaugural season of the television show Saturday Night Live.

[2] Born in Chicago to Albanian-American parents, Belushi started his own comedy troupe with Tino Insana and Steve Beshekas, called "The West Compass Trio".

Belushi developed a series of characters on the show that reached great success, with an imitation of Henry Kissinger and a portrayal of Ludwig van Beethoven.

He also pursued interests in music: with Aykroyd, Lou Marini, Tom Malone, Steve Cropper, Donald "Duck" Dunn, and Paul Shaffer, he founded The Blues Brothers, which led to the film of the same name.

[9] Adam Anastos Belushi was an Albanian immigrant from Qytezë, Albania, the owner of the Fair Oaks restaurant on North Avenue in Chicago.

[16] Belushi acquired the iconic "College" crewneck, worn by his character in Animal House, at a print shop when visiting his brother Jim, who attended Southern Illinois University.

[2] In 1972, Belushi was offered a role, together with Chevy Chase and Christopher Guest, in National Lampoon Lemmings,[1] a parody of Woodstock, which played off-Broadway in 1972.

[20] Over his four-year tenure at Saturday Night Live Belushi developed a series of successful characters, including the belligerent Saturday Night Live Samurai; Henry Kissinger; Ludwig van Beethoven; the Greek owner (Pete Dionisopoulos) of the Olympia Café; Captain James T. Kirk; and a contributor of furious opinion pieces on Weekend Update, during which he coined a catchphrase, "But N-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O!

Originally intended to warm up the studio audience before broadcasts of Saturday Night Live, the Blues Brothers were eventually featured as musical guests.

[22] In Rolling Stone's February 2015 appraisal of all 141 Saturday Night Live cast members, Belushi received their top ranking.

Upon its initial release, Animal House received generally mixed reviews from critics, but Time magazine and Roger Ebert proclaimed it one of the year's best movies.

[25] Following the success of the Blues Brothers on Saturday Night Live, Belushi and Aykroyd, with the help of pianist-arranger Paul Shaffer, assembled studio talent forming a proper band.

Saturday Night Live saxophonist "Blue" Lou Marini and trombonist-saxophonist Tom Malone, who had previously played in Blood, Sweat & Tears were there.

At Shaffer's suggestion, guitarist Steve Cropper and bassist Donald "Duck" Dunn, the powerhouse combo from Booker T and the M.G.

The only film Belushi made without Aykroyd following their departure from Saturday Night Live was the romantic comedy Continental Divide (directed by Michael Apted).

Released in September 1981, it starred Belushi as Chicago hometown hero writer Ernie Souchack (loosely based on newspaper columnist and long-time family friend Mike Royko), who gets an assignment researching a scientist (played by Blair Brown) who studies birds of prey in the remote Rocky Mountains.

By 1981, Belushi had become a fan and advocate of the punk rock band Fear after seeing them perform in several after-hours New York City bars and brought them to Cherokee Studios to record songs for the soundtrack of Neighbors.

Blues Brothers band member Tom Scott, along with producing partner and Cherokee owner Bruce Robb, initially helped with the session, but later pulled out due to conflicts with Belushi.

Belushi, along with O'Donoghue and Saturday Night Live writer Nelson Lyon, booked Fear to play Saturday Night Live's Halloween broadcast on October 31, 1981; the telecast of the performance featured then-novel moshing and stage diving, and was cut short by NBC due to the band's profanity.

[29] Up to his death, Belushi was pursuing movie projects,[30] including an ABSCAM-related caper called Moon Over Miami, to be directed by Louis Malle; and a diamond-smuggling caper called Noble Rot with Jay Sandrich, based on a script he adapted and rewrote with former Saturday Night Live writer Don Novello.

During the production of The Blues Brothers, director John Landis confronted Belushi in his trailer after finding a stash of cocaine.

In the early morning hours of March 5, 1982, Belushi, while in his Chateau Marmont bungalow, was visited separately by friends Robin Williams and Robert De Niro, as well as Cathy Smith.

During a preliminary hearing held in September 1985, two pathologists testified that Belushi's cause of death was due to an overdose from cocaine and heroin.

[42] Later in 1982, Rolling Stone magazine described the circumstances of her arrest: "On the afternoon of March 5th, Cathy Evelyn Smith had appeared driving the wrong way into the one-way exit of the Chateau Marmont Hotel on Sunset Strip behind the wheel of John Belushi's rented red Mercedes … At that moment, a hundred feet away, Belushi lay naked and dead on the floor of his $200-a-day bungalow.

Smith pled no contest June 11, 1986, to involuntary manslaughter and three counts of furnishing and administering controlled substances to Belushi in the hours before he was found dead.

Reports increased of excess noise, damaging grass and disturbing the peace of others buried there, along with fans paying bizarre tributes by littering his gravesite with liquor bottles, beer cans, and other paraphernalia.

"[47] When Elizabeth Taylor learned of Belushi's death, she referenced his comedic impersonation of her on Saturday Night Live in 1978, when she had been overweight, by sardonically remarking that he had gone "to such great lengths to satirize my excesses and then died of his own".

[49] During the preproduction of Ghostbusters, Reitman remarked that Slimer bore a resemblance to Belushi's character Bluto from Animal House.

[53] Polish rock band Lady Pank recorded a song "John Belushi" for their 1988 album Tacy sami, with references to his Albanian ancestry.

Saturday Night Live castmate Jane Curtin, who appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2011, stated that Belushi was a misogynist who would deliberately sabotage the work of female writers and comics while working on the show: "So you'd go to a table read, and if a woman writer had written a piece for John, he would not read it in his full voice.