Jeff Ross has earned himself a slightly less prominent place in Comedy Central's roast of Roseanne Barr with a joke about the massacre at a screening of "The Dark Knight Rises" in Aurora, Colo., last month.
Comedy Central has cut the joke from the broadcast of "Comedy Central Roast of Roseanne," which premieres Sunday at 10 p.m., a spokesman for Comedy Central told TheWrap.
Also read: Comedy Central Roseanne Roast: What You Won't See on TV
The primary target of the joke was red-headed roaster Seth Green, who Ross compared to Colorado shooting suspect James Holmes.
"Seth, you haven't gotten this much attention since you shot all those people in Aurora," Ross cracked. "You’re actually not like (accused shooter) James Holmes. He was doing things in a theater that people remember.”
Also read: Dane Cook Apologizes for "Dark Knight Rises" Shooting Joke
Ross, a fixture at the Comedy Central roasts, came loaded for controversy at the taping of the Roseanne roast, which took place Saturday at the Hollywood Palladium. The funnyman arrived dressed as a football coach for Penn State, which has been embroiled in a sex scandal involving former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, and accompanied by shirtless young men wearing only football helmets and towels.
Ross' wisecrack came little more than a week after comedian Dane Cook was forced to apologize after joking that "The Dark Knight Rises" was so bad that audience members were likely hoping to be shot.
"This movie is pretty much a piece of crap," he told an audience at Laugh Factory in Los Angeles. "I know that if none of that would have happened, pretty sure that somebody in that theater, about 25 minutes in, realizing it was a piece of crap, was probably like, ‘Ugh, fucking shoot me.'"
Ross' upcoming Comedy Central series "The Burn," on which he'll "roast" the topics of the day, premieres Aug. 14.