Key and Peele works as both a Comedy Central TV show and a video-clip factory3. Each half-hour episode stitches together short filmed sketches, often with Key and Peele in wigs, prosthetics or accents, playing characters like a substitute teacher, football players with escalating names, or a couple whispering insults about each other's partners1. Comedy Central uploaded most sketches to its YouTube channel after airing, letting individual bits break out on their own.

Two breakout sketches set the pattern for how the show spread. 'Substitute Teacher,' where Key plays a teacher who cannot pronounce suburban roll-call names, was uploaded on October 17th, 2012 and cleared 57 million YouTube views by September 20141. 'East/West College Bowl,' a fake ESPN player-introduction segment stacked with names like Hingle McCringleberry and D'Isiah T. Billings-Clyde, went up on September 20th, 2012 and pulled over 25.3 million views in the same window2. Sketches like 'I Said Bitch' and 'Pizza Order' each crossed the eight-figure view mark and turned into their own quotable set pieces7.

The show's sketches typically get referenced by quoting distinctive names or lines. Fans often reference 'East/West College Bowl' by inventing absurd player names in the same cadence, or reference 'Substitute Teacher' with the mispronounced 'A-A-Ron' variant1. Common conventions include sharing the YouTube clip directly, quoting a punchline without context, or using freeze-frame reaction shots from a sketch as a standalone image.