Gilbert Gottfried excelled at being a comic flame-thrower, as demonstrated when he roasted Roseanne Barr

Los Angeles Times

Gottfried, who died Tuesday at age 67, was the rare comedian who can get away with crossing the line, says Greg Braxton. During the 2012 taping of the Comedy Central Roast of Roseanne Barr, "no one in attendance was prepared for the comic flame-thrower that Gilbert Gottfried...brought to the party," says Braxton. "Dressed in a nice suit, Gottfried was unleashed — and relentless. Most of his jokes could not be printed in a family newspaper. I would know: I was covering the roast for a story. And I don’t know if I’ve ever laughed harder in my life." Braxton adds: "The roast marked one of Gottfried’s first high-profile TV appearances after being fired by the Aflac insurance company — he’d voiced its duck mascot — the year before, when the comedian fired off a series of offensive tweets about the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan....No comedian as risqué could go a career without crossing the line, and Gottfried did — multiple times. He joked about masturbation at the Emmys. He joked about Sept. 11 during a roast of Hugh Hefner. As roast master Jane Lynch introduced him in 2012, he was 'that scary thing under your bed from when you were a kid.' Gottfried may have learned his lesson after all; he never again found himself in quite the same hot water he did in 2011. But he came up in a no-holds-barred comedy world that was rarely submitted to the same scrutiny as today’s Netflix specials and viral videos. That world is where he sharpened his knives. Because the more vicious Gottfried got, the louder the audience roared."

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• Gilbert Gottfried was often controversial, but he was the perfect talk show guest: "He didn’t leave stand-up, and as the 1980s progressed he perfected his stage persona as a dyspeptic, unlikable comedian willing to shock, awe and not look back — a stance that often got him in trouble," Clay Risen and Peter Keepnews write in Gottfried's New York Times obituary. "He was widely criticized after joking about masturbation at the 1991 Emmy Awards. He was fired as the voice of the Aflac duck in 2011 after making insensitive jokes on Twitter about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan that year. (Some of his even more ribald humor is collected on a 2005 DVD, Dirty Jokes.) Still, Mr. Gottfried maintained an ardent following, especially among comedy connoisseurs who respected his timing as well as his other considerable talents. Although he was best known for his loud, annoying voice, he was also an excellent impressionist, whose best-known voices included Jerry Seinfeld, Andrew Dice Clay and Groucho Marx as an old man. He was a regular on late-night talk shows and radio shows, notably Howard Stern’s, a venue where he could unwind his often rambling stories and veer a bit further into the blue comedy he specialized in. It was that same unchecked humor that made him a regular on Comedy Central’s series of roasts, in which celebrities take turns jabbing at the guest of 'honor.'"
• Read the story of Gottfried's photo with Bob Saget, Norm Macdonald and Jeff Ross
• Listen to Gottfried speak in his normal voice in a voicemail to The Howard Stern Show -- or as Stern calls it: "serial killer Gilbert” 
• Looking back at Gottfried's funniest and most NSFW moments