Whenever a celebrity dies, news of their passing spreads across social media like wildfire and the more famous they were in life, the more shocking their death is. However, every so often it turns out that the celebrity isn’t actually dead at all and that news of their ‘death’ was just a hoax that temporarily upset fans across the world. Quite a few celebrities have fallen victim to death hoaxes, including these 8…
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Paul McCartney
Paul has ‘died’ not once, but twice! The first false report of his death came in 1966 at the height of Beatlemania and it was rumoured that he was replaced by a body double. Then in 2012, #RIPPaulMcCartney began trending on Twitter, leading millions to think he had passed, but fortunately this turned out to be a second death hoax.
2. Macaulay Culkin
In 2014 a Facebook page entitled ‘RIP Macaulay Culkin’ was created and news spread that the former Home Alone actor had died. Macaulay himself spoke up and reassured people that he was alive and kicking after the tribute page had amassed several hundred thousand likes.
3. Lady Gaga
A similar thing happened to Lady Gaga in early 2016. A Facebook tribute page entitled ‘RIP Lady Gaga’ was set up and attracted over a million likes. Of course, fans assumed she had died, though the matter was soon cleared up and fans were reassured that the singer was indeed alive.
4. Celine Dion
A hoax about the supposed death of Celine Dion went viral across Facebook in late 2013 thanks to a scam app. There were two different stories going round of how the singer died: one claimed she died in a plane accident, the other claimed she was killed in a car crash. Neither was true and both were put out there to con people into clicking on the app and giving their information.
5. Jack Black
The Twitter account for Tenacious D was hacked and a message was posted saying that leader singer Jack Black was dead. It only took a few hours before the guy who hacked the account came forward and insisted Jack was actually alive.
6. Eminem
Eminem is another celebrity who has fallen victim to more than one death hoax. The first was back in 2000 when he was claimed to have died in a car accident. The second happened in 2013 when a post on Facebook claimed to show a photo of the rapper getting stabbed, though it was later confirmed that Eminem himself had not been stabbed (or had not died) at all.
7. Jackie Chan
Jackie has amazingly been the subject of three different death hoaxes. In March 2011 it was claimed he’d passed away due to a heart attack, then a few months later someone created a Facebook page entitled ‘RIP Jackie Chan’, which resulted in Jackie’s reps issuing a statement confirming he was in fact alive. Then in 2013 it was widely believed that he had died, until the actor posted a photo of himself with the day’s newspaper, just in case people didn’t believe he was actually alive.
8. Jim Carrey
Facebook has falsely killed off many celebrities and yet another one falsely claimed to have died on Facebook as the result of a hoax is Jim Carrey. Shortly after the ‘RIP Jim Carrey’ tribute page was set up, his people let the public know the actor hadn’t died and was as alive as ever.