Gimmick Grade: WWE's Danhausen

He's very nice, he's very evil, and over the past few months, he has become very popular with the WWE fans. Everyone seems to be loving that Danhausen recently, and it's been a long time coming.

Despite receiving a mixed reception during his debut at WWE Elimination Chamber 2026, primarily because many fans believed that it would be Chris Jericho inside the giant crate, Danhausen has become one of the most popular performers not just in WWE, but in all of wrestling. It's reached a point where the WWE Superstar has been invited to the NBA finals based on the fact that he lifted the curse on the New York Knicks, resulting in the team going 2-0 in their seven-game series against the San Antonio Spurs. Ironically, the Spurs pulled the series back to 2-1 at the one game that Danhausen was actually a special guest, but that was just a bump in the road as the Knicks won their first NBA Championship in over 50 years, and Danhausen is credited for being a superstitious reason.

Danhausen has been a breath of fresh air to many WWE fans, bringing back the campy silliness that can appeal to the younger audience, while also being tongue-in-cheek enough for adult fans to appreciate as well. That has translated into Danhausen being one of the biggest movers of merchandise in WWE since his debut, and considering that he is outselling the likes of Brock Lesnar, Randy Orton, and even Roman Reigns over WWE WrestleMania 42 weekend, it's safe to say that after a 13 year career where he's wrestled for ROH, AEW, and GCW, Danhausen has finally on his way to achieving his ultimate goal; world domination.

Now that we've all had a few months to get used to Danhausen in WWE, we're going to break down the character and see how good it actually is in our opinion. We've done this sort of thing for the likes of GUNTHER and R-Truth, the latter of whom is someone who WWE fans absolutely want to see interact with Danhausen, and now it's time to give a rating on the character that has become the breakout success of WWE in 2026. This is the Gimmickhausen Gradehausen for Danhausen...hausen.

To truly understand the character itself, you have to ask yourself the question "Who is Danhausen?" Or for some people, "What is a Danhausen?" To answer those questions, you don't need to look any further than one of the main influences for the Danhausen character, former late night TV host and comedian Conan O'Brien...yes, really.

Before O'Brien became a staple of late night American television for nearly three decades, he was a writer for hit shows like "Saturday Night Live" and more famously "The Simpsons" during the latter show's unofficial golden era. His style of comedy was one that Danhausen liked a lot as, in his own words, it wasn't too vulgar and could digestible by virtually everybody. This would ultimately play into the overall goal for the Danhausen character when it reached its current form as he wants all of the money he can get, he wants to be on as many televisions as humanly possible, and O'Brien's style of comedy which didn't feature any swearing meant that if Danhausen didn't swear, he wouldn't get pulled off of TV.

When O'Brien had heard about this relatively unknown wrestler that had used him as inspiration, he would invite Danhausen on to his "Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend" podcast to explain how the character came to be. O'Brien naturally saw the striking make-up, the cape, and the jar full of teeth when looking at pictures of Danhausen, stating that he looks very demonic and wondered how he was involved in the character's creations. Danhausen responded by saying that the character is essentially if O'Brien had been possessed by a demon, hence why he is very nice, but also very evil.

Mark Hamill's voice of The Joker in the DC Animated Universe is the main inspiration for the voice of Danhausen. The curses he puts on people were inspired by spam emails that said things like "If you don't send this message to ten people, you will have terrible luck," and he even took a lot of his facial expressions from the likes of William Regal, who he claimed in an interview with Chris Van Vliet is one of the best comedic wrestlers that there's ever been despite how technically gifted he is. All of this adds up to the character we know today. 

Arguably, the funniest thing about what we've said so far about Danhausen is that we've come this far and not mentioned any matches he's been in. You know you've got yourself a great character when you could lose and not lose any momentum. That's the position Danhausen had before he got to WWE. Now he's in WWE, he's actually undefeated, but even if he went on a losing streak, he's so over with the fans that it wouldn't really matter.

We've talked extensively about the comedic side of Danhausen, but the man (is he a man? Is he a goblin? We don't know) who proclaims to be both very nice and very evil wasn't always so nice. In fact, the earliest incarnation of the character was very evil, and that's it.

Early on in his career, Danhausen thought about hanging up his boots for good. He was getting injured, no one really cared who he was, and he was just another guy floating around the Michigan independent scene. Then he was invited to wrestle on a Halloween-themed event in the mid-2010s, and everything changed. He wore face paint that paid tribute to John Carpenter's "They Live" movie, and something felt right about wearing the face paint. As time went on, he would wear the paint more and more to the point where it became a permanent part of his appearance, which is where the evil side of his persona came from.

In 2019, Danhausen released a video called "Danhausen A.D." on his YouTube channel, with A.D. standing for "After Death." It was this version of Danhausen that truly broke out into the public eye as he would wear skull-like paint, walk to the ring with a plastic bag on his head, and even painted himself like the cover of Converge's iconic album "Jane Doe." The paint he would become best known for originally started as him trying to recreate Pazuzu from "The Exorcist," and the more he wore the paint, the more he adjusted it to fit his own character, while also being the face that was easiest to recreate on short notice.

However, he couldn't stay evil for long as his short-lived partnership with Effy on the independent scene, titled "Gaytanic Panic," brought out the lighter side of Danhausen, and he has been the lovable ghoul we know him as now ever since.

Grading a character like Danhausen is tricky because you can look at it from a variety of different standpoints. How marketable is he? How over is he? Does he have longevity? Is he the type of character who could be a world champion? Is he any good in between the ropes? 

On that last point, as an in-ring performer, Danhausen is just fine. There are many better wrestlers in WWE, let alone the wider wrestling world, and while he is more than just a competent in-ring worker, it's highly unlikely that he's ever going to reach the point where he is main eventing shows like WrestleMania based on his work in the ring. After all, his sole Premium Live Event match so far in his WWE career has been a tag team match that was built around his mystery partner being a mini version of himself.

Having said all that, all of the other standpoints are where Danhausen truly shines. You know you've reached a level of fame in the wrestling world when you see both children and adults dressing up like you on Halloween, and considering Danhausen is a spooky character in general, that is going to happen for many more years to come. As we said in the beginning, he's on the verge of being given the key to New York City because of what's happened with the NBA, and don't be surprised if you see Zohran Mamdani in the black and white face paint in the near future, which would only push Danhausen into the mainstream even more.

He's insanely marketable; he is over to the point where he is already a national treasure in at least one state, and to be honest, he doesn't need to be a world champion for the type of character he is. Danhausen is a character who can be slotted into any segment on a show, and he will create something memorable. If WWE did want to push him as a serious wrestler, even for one match here and there, it would gain an even bigger reaction. Just think back to when Santino Marella was in the Elimination Chamber with Daniel Bryan. No one thought he would win until he got dangerously close to getting the upset. You can create those moments with Danhausen because a loss isn't going to hurt him at all. 

Considering that he was already everywhere before he got to AEW, let alone WWE, his gimmick has to get a high grade. Now that he has the WWE machine behind him, the sky is the limit for Danhausen, a creation that will go down as one of the most popular gimmicks of the last decade. 

Overall: A-Minus.