When I was a kid I used to fish with and old dude who looked like him. That Wrongfully Accused scene always cracks me up because that's exactly what he looked like.
I think that Leslie Nielsen probably shaped my sense of humor more than anyone else. Just that deadpan delivery fucking kills me every time - Airplane! is easily the funniest movie ever made and all the clips in this thread made me laugh harder than anything I've seen in months. I normally don't care when celebrities die but I legitimately mourned his passing.
Mel Brooks is another one, all his movies are masterpieces and when they teamed up for Dracula Dead and Loving It! I actually rented the tape and took it to my friends house to use his 2 deck VCR to copy it. I watched that shit every day when I was like 13, both to crack up at it and to jerk off to Lucy's rack. Actually now that I think about it that's probably a big part of why I dig goth chicks so much now. Anyways, when Mel Brooks finally dies I feel like that type of humor will just be gone. No one's really doing it anymore, everything is either super pretentious and overly concerned with being "smart" comedy or completely formulaic. I just want a movie with slapstick, fart jokes, tons of visual gags, and deadpan one-liners that doesn't try to teach me a lesson or have a bunch of unnecessary diverse characters to try to appeal to everyone - is that so much to ask?