Jeff Dunham is one of the most-viewed and most popular comedians of all time, dominating sites like Youtube and putting phrases like “Silence, I keel you!” and “on a steeeek” into the pop culture vernacular for years to come. Jeff Dunham T shirts are flying off the shelves, and he even had his own self-named tv show! If you live under a rock with no cable hookup and you missed his comedy specials, and somehow missed him online (his debut of Achmed is in the Top 10 most viewed Youtube videos, with over 350 million hits!), there’s one thing about him that makes these accomplishments all the more incredible:

He’s a ventriloquist.

That’s right. Reviving an art that most thought to be long-dead, including many of the networks that wound up syndicating him worldwide, Jeff Dunham has become a self made millionaire by letting nobody convince him that the hobby he loves wouldn’t succeed. On the strength of his hilarious characters and his expertise of the form, he’s reached a level of success and popularity no fellow ventriloquist has ever seen. While his clean-cut image appeals to families, his act is edgy and offensive enough to satisfy any fan of modern comedy, and his characters continue to be contemporary and relevant. His most popular include:

Walter: A retired old man, Walter is discontented and sarcastic to a hilarious degree. Married for forty-six years, Walter claims the happiest moment of his life was “forty-seven years ago”. He’s often used to read and mock letters from the audience, and was one of Dunham’s original puppets, appearing in every one of his tv specials.

Peanut: A hyperactive, spastic purple puppet, Peanut often torments both the other characters and Jeff directly, even using a tiny Jeff puppet to mock him. A fan favorite and easily the most unusual of Dunham’s characters, he asked, after Dunham claimed to have never done drugs, “then how the hell did you come up with me”? Peanut was also one of his original puppets, another fixture of every one of his tv specials.

Achmed The Dead Terrorist: The newest addition, Achmed is a skeletal corpse of an incompetent suicide bomber used to satirize the terrorism issue. He suffers from “premature detonation”, and became the breakthrough star of Dunham’s act, propelling it to unheard-of levels of popularity. A very difficult character to make funny in such sensitive times, Jeff Dunham had the skill and professionalism needed to make it succeed. Now Achmed The Dead Terrorist T Shirts fly off the shelves and everyone knows that famous line, “I KEEL YOU!”.

There are many more, usually up to seven different characters in one act, from a bumbling superhero to a smooth “Player In the Management Profession”. With such a wide variety, there’s a character for everyone to share a laugh with. We have Jeff Dunham t-shirts featuring the most popular characters and lines, and will continue to follow Jeff as he proves that ventriloquism, unlike Achmed, will never die.