Hello Kitty is undeniably a pop culture icon, yet surprisingly, she's not actually a cat.

You might be curious as to how Hello Kitty isn't a cat?

She has whiskers, ears, and a nose in the right places. Plus, she's named Kitty!

Unfortunately, it seems we've been misled, as revealed in a Saturday Night Live comedy sketch. The video features Hello Kitty store employees training a new staff member, and then things take an unexpected turn.

Cecily Strong, Molly Kearney, Keke Palmer, Bowen Yang, Sarah Sherman, and Marcello Hernández star in the sketch, and the revelation about Hello Kitty becomes even more amusing when you see the actors' reactions.

Hello Kitty is NOT a cat (Getty Stock Images)

"If you turn to page five of your employee handbooks, you'll find a list of facts about Hello Kitty," a store manager explains.

"As you can see, she loves to bake cookies, she attends school, and she's not a cat, she's actually a human little girl."

I'm sorry. She's a what?

One of the trainees then asks, bewildered: "No... why did you say Hello Kitty was a human little girl."

The manager responds: “Well, because it’s true! According to the creators, Hello Kitty is indeed a human little girl.

“[…] These are just the official Sanrio facts about Hello Kitty.”

The managers continue to share more facts, including that Hello Kitty is in third grade and resides in London.

She also has a boyfriend named Dear Daniel, and unlike Hello Kitty, ‘he actually is a cat’.

Initially, many viewers thought the sketch was merely a joke, but it turns out to be based on truth, as confirmed by Hello Kitty's creator company, Sanrio - leaving people genuinely perplexed.

Commenting on X, one user wrote: “The fact that these Hello Kitty facts are real,” while another replied: “Wait what????”

Another person commented: “I wonder how many people googled ‘is Hello Kitty supposed to be a human’ after this skit.”

To which another responded: “I definitely did, and now I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

Hello Kitty is a child (Paul Hawthorne/Getty Images)

Anthropologist Christine R. Yano previously shared how she was corrected by Sanrio while preparing her Hello Kitty exhibition at the Japanese American National Museum, having mistakenly assumed – like many of us – that the subject of her display was a cat.

Yano, from the University of Hawaii, told the Los Angeles Times in 2014: “That’s one correction Sanrio made for my script for the show.

"Hello Kitty is not a cat. She’s a cartoon character. She is a little girl. She is a friend. But she is not a cat.

“She’s never depicted on all fours. She walks and sits like a two-legged creature.

“She does have a pet cat of her own, however, and it’s called Charmmy Kitty.”

The more you know.