Abe Vigoda, longtime veteran actor best known for his role as Detective Sgt. Phil Fish on the 1970's sitcom Barney Miller, passed away at 94. Vigoda was also known as Tessio in the Godfather movies, but often as the subject of a decades long running gag regarding mistaken reports of his death that first surfaced in the early 1980's. Vigoda made fun of it himself, often showing up on late night shows like Letterman and Conan to poke fun at his not yet dead status, and one of his more recent credits was a Super Bowl ad from 2010 with Betty White that mocked both actors' advanced ages. To me he's most known, strangely enough, as John Travolta's grumpy grandfather in the first Look Who's Talking, which I happened to have seen by sheer circumstance enough times to note it as my own personal connection to the actor everyone seemed to recognize from something.
Betty White/Abe Vigoda Snickers ad:
