The 10 Biggest Celebrity Death Hoaxes Ever

Did you hear about that celebrity who just died? No, not that one… the other one! You know the guy. He was in that thing, with that other guy. And then he was on that TV show, with those two women. Come on, what’s his name?! You remember him, don’t ya?

Don’t worry if you’re confused by all that. We are, too! For many different reasons, the world loves to track celebrity deaths. And for many more (and even more confusing) reasons, the world also loves to track phony celebrity deaths. Well, the internet does, at least. And that’s the topic on our plates today: celebrity death hoaxes.

Read on below to reminisce about the ten craziest, wildest, most unlikely, and in some cases, most effective celebrity death hoaxes to ever happen. You won’t believe how far some of these phony passings went before they were stopped in their tracks by, ya know, reality.

Related: Ten Terrifying Times Star Athletes Foretold Their Own Deaths

10 Paul McCartney

Paul McCartney supposedly died in 1966. That’s what a world-famous urban legend claims, at least. And this apparent (well, we hope) death hoax has been so provocative—and so memorable—that it still rages on to this very day. So, it all started with reports that The Beatles legend had been involved in a fatal car crash in 1966. He was then supposedly replaced by a lookalike who carried on his musical gifts. And the whole thing came about from a student newspaper in Iowa, of all places, that began hypothesizing about “clues” around his supposed passing.

Some of the “clues” which emerged came from what they claimed were coded messages in both The White Album and Abbey Road. Most notably, they and others claimed that if you rewind the first few garbled seconds of the song “I’m So Tired,” you can hear the message “Paul is a dead man, miss him, miss him, miss him,” running along in the background. Creepy, right? It’s stupid, too, considering that Paul has been going strong in a very public way and even headlining global tours well into his 70s. So, he ain’t dead! Or… uh… his replacement is just really talented.^[1]

9 Rihanna

There have been multiple major death hoaxes involving Rihanna, the most badass Barbadian pop star ever. In 2011, Twitter claimed that she had died in a fiery plane crash. Not long after that, a photoshopped article written by a French fake news site claimed that she had “sunk into an alcohol-induced coma before succumbing to a heart attack.” Both of those claims were crazy, no doubt. And they also drew a ton of viral attention on Twitter and other similar social media platforms!

But fortunately, they were fake as can be. Rihanna is very much alive and well. She’s a mother to multile children now, and as of May 2025, was expecting her third with her partner, rapper A$AP Rocky. She’s also got a legitimate beauty industry empire on her hands. Can’t accomplish all that when you’re dead!^[2]

8 SpongeBob SquarePants

Okay, so this death hoax doesn’t actually involve SpongeBob SquarePants himself, but rather the voice actor who played him in so many episodes of the legendary cartoon. That would be a man named Tom Kenny. As it turns out, Tom is a pretty prolific and successful voice actor who is sought out by all kinds of Hollywood producers. But by far, his best role has been performing as SpongeBob. So, when he “died” in a September 2012 hoax, people were pretty up in arms.

Sadly, Tom has been “killed” in several hoaxes across the social media era. The most notable one came in that early fall month back in 2012. An image started going around Twitter that month that stated: “RIP Tom Kenny… retweet to say thanks for making your childhood happier.” And predictably, lots and lots of people retweeted it. But it was completely fake! Tom is alive and well to this very day.^[3]

7 Jackie Chan

In the bygone days of the early social-media-led internet, on the morning of August 17, 2011, some wise guy created a Facebook group called “Jackie Chan RIP.” Within just a few hours of the group’s creation, more than 150,000 people joined. Then, from there, the supposedly real group bubbled up into a global trending topic on Twitter. But the famed and much beloved actor Jackie Chan wasn’t dead! The whole thing had been a ruse.

It wasn’t the only time Jackie was involved with a strange death hoax, either. A few months before that, in March of 2011, Twitter users reported that he’d been felled by a heart attack. That one was fake, too. But for whatever reason, Jackie was a persistent target of fake death reports. He’s 71 years old now, though, and still doing just fine. Live on, Jackie!^[4]

6 Betty White

Betty White lived for a long time. And she was in the public eye for almost all of her adult life after kicking off her television career as a very young woman. So maybe it’s no surprise that she endured quite a few death hoaxes in her day. Especially as she got closer to the end, and the social media activity around her supposed demise only ever seemed to ramp up!

Take, for example, the biggest scare that we got regarding The Golden Girls alum. It came back in May of 2017, with death rumors swirling on (where else) Twitter. There, one message retweeted thousands of times even claimed that Betty’s own publicist had confirmed her passing. But there was just one issue: White appeared on James Corden’s late-night television talk show The Late Late Show later that same day. Tough to do that when you’re dead!

Betty died on the final day of 2021. Her death came just 17 days short of her 100th birthday, no less. So she lived 99 full years of life. And only endured a few death hoaxes in the process! We miss ya, Betty.^[5]

5 Lil Wayne

According to social media reports, the rapper Lil Wayne supposedly died after winding up in a Los Angeles hospital upon suffering a seizure back in March of 2013. As the story went, Wayne suffered the severe health issue, and things were so dire that a priest was even administering the mogul’s last rites. And had it been true, it would have been shocking—one of the most famous and, at that point, most popular rappers in the world, dead? That’s a Michael Jackson-level tragedy. Right?

Of course, that “report” was straight-up garbage. Wayne wasn’t dead at all! He had fun with it, too, when he took to Twitter hours later. While fans suspected things had hopefully been a hoax, Wayne confirmed it with a simple tweet that read: “I’m good, everybody. Thx for the prayers and love.” Then, he promptly began his next world tour later that year for his (aptly titled) latest album I Am Not a Human Being II. A human being? Maybe not. But still alive? Definitely. Whew!^[6]

4 Agatha Christie

Where else can you get a list that follows up a Lil Wayne entry with one about Agatha Christie? Ah, the joys of the internet… But jokes aside, modern-day celebrities are not the only ones who have dealt with death hoaxes.

Way back when, the world-famous author Agatha Christie completely disappeared from her estate in the Berkshires for a total of 11 days. Friends and family members searched for her, but when they couldn’t find her, they began to fear the worst. They eventually sent out more than 15,000 volunteers to scour the English countryside. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was even one of those very volunteers! He took things a step further, too, by reaching out to the neighborhood psychic with questions about where Agatha could have gone. Seriously.

But still, it all came and went to no avail. Finally, after 11 days of confusion and concern with Agatha’s presumed death at the top of everybody’s mind, the crime writer turned back up. Just like that! As it turned out, Agatha had stormed off without telling everybody after getting angry at her cheating husband. She suffered a stress-induced type of amnesia known as a “fugue state” and was unaccounted for across nearly two weeks. Eventually, she was discovered alone and confused… but otherwise healthy. And very much alive. What a rollercoaster!^[7]

3 Justin Bieber

More than pretty much anyone else on this list, Justin Bieber is absolutely no stranger to having fans fling death hoaxes his way. Maybe it makes sense; after all, he was one of the first pop stars to really crest his wave right as social media was taking off. So it would be reasonable that he would get a lot of, uh, strange attention from fans seeking to create completely fake news. But Justin lives on! No matter what fans have tried to do to him on Twitter and elsewhere, he remains alive and doing well enough.

The hoaxes are pretty wild, though. According to the internet, Justin has supposedly committed suicide (that was a persistent 2009 viral rumor online). Other times, he’s allegedly been shot dead in a nightclub altercation (2010 checking in!). Still other times, he supposedly suffered a terrible and very fatal drug overdose (also in 2010 with that one). And then, randomly, in May 2012, there was a totally unexplained “RIP Justin Bieber” trend that went viral despite not being true. And so, here we are. Justin is alive… but the internet keeps trying to kill him. Be careful online, Biebs!^[8]

2 Cher or Thatcher?!

The moment when the superstar singer Cher supposedly “died” is probably one of the most infamous instances of a hashtag gone completely wrong. On April 8, 2013, former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher passed away. Following her death, a hashtag started floating around Twitter and elsewhere online. Makes sense, right? Well, not when you read what the hashtag was. For whatever reason, the hashtag of choice to mark ex-PM Thatcher’s death was #nowthatchersdead. Read that again… but really closely. See the problem?

Some people read it correctly the first time, as “Now Thatcher’s Dead,” and knew what was going on. Other people (understandably!) misread it and interpreted the hashtag as “Now That Cher’s Dead.” Unfortunately for Cher, the misread blew up. Before anybody knew it, the ’70s icon had supposedly passed away. She hadn’t, of course. And Cher is still alive and well today. But it remains one of the strangest (and funniest, if we’re being honest) death hoaxes to ever befall a celebrity.^[9]

1 Mark Twain

Let’s round things out with America’s first-ever celebrity death hoax. The occasion was 1897, and the subject was none other than the famous author Mark Twain. Reporters at a newspaper mistakenly reported that Twain himself had been felled rather than the real person who had died: the author’s long-ailing cousin James Ross Clemens. Perhaps it was a classic case of a bad game of telephone or something, but it was eventually printed that Twain had passed when, in fact, he hadn’t.

Then, ten years later, Twain was again wrongly assumed dead. Reporters on the East Coast briefly lost track of him while he was traveling on a steamship voyage from Virginia to New York City. For whatever reason, losing track of Twain for a bit meant some reporter just assumed that he’d passed. We’re not sure how that works, either. Still, it sent the world into a tizzy after the papers published the horrifically erroneous information.

Regardless, Twain’s double-death hoax at least gave us one great moment. After he suffered the second death hoax, Twain himself penned one of the greatest (and still most famous) lines about mistaken mortality in all of human history: “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” Indeed!^[10]