Opulent Russian Guy is a meme based on television commercials promoting Directv. The commercials feature Opulent Russian Guy surrounded by a lavish setting, speaking of saving money in poor English and using improper grammar.

About

The commercial portrays a wealthy Russian man in a surrounding of lavish settings include poker-playing dogs, golden statues, golden grapes, bricks of gold, and a miniature pet giraffe. It has been stated by some that the commercial is a parody of Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, owner of the New Jersey Nets.

Spread

The original commercial has spawned countless remakes and parodies over the course of only a few day's time. Photo stills of the commercial edited for humorous appeal and parody of other memes have also appeared on many websites. The man playing the Opulent Russian Guy is actor Timothy V. Murphy.

The commercial itself was uploaded to YouTube Mid Summer of 2010, and since then many of the videos have been removed and re-uploaded several times. Due to the perpetual re-uploading, actual hit numbers cannot be accurately measured. Currently uploaded copies of the original vary in hit numbers from a few thousand to hundreds of thousands. Actual views, however, are likely to be well into the millions. The commercial became so popular It prompted DirecTv to have Opulent Russian Guy to appear at the MTV Video Music Awards. The video can be seen below.

The commercial and associated parodies have garnered a considerable amount of hits on google and other search engines as well as spreading to twitter and other meme and photo based discussion boards such as 4chan.org

Remakes and Parodies

There have been a considerable amount of parodies created from the original commercial, too many to list here. Below are a few samples of YouTube user created video parodies.