Popular Mexican Comedian Roberto Gomez Bolaños, Known as "Chespirito," Dies at 85

Mexican comedian and screenwriter Roberto Gomez Bolaños, known by his nickname "Chespirito," passed awayFriday, reports The Los Angeles Times. He was 85. Bolañoshad been battling respiratory problems and died of a heart attack at his home in Cancun.

Bolaños was considered to be one of Mexico's greatest comedic actors, having created and starred in a pair of successful television comedies in the early 1970s, El Chavo del Ocho and El Chapulin Colorado.

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El Chavo del Ocho, in which Bolaños played an eight-year-old orphan who wore a barrel over his clothes, remains incredibly popular today. In reruns, the show still ranks among the highest-rated Spanish-language programs despite initially airing four decades ago. In 2012, Forbes reported that El Chavo averaged 91 million viewers per episode across broadcasts in the Americas.

Bolaños' character in El Chapulin Colorado ("The Crimson Grasshopper"), a timid and mostly ineffective superhero, was the inspiration for The Simpsons' Bumblebee Man character.

As an example of the actor's popularity, the outpouring of condolences on Twitter following hisdeath made him the number one trending topic on Twitter on Friday, beating out the new Star Wars movie trailer and Black Friday conversation.