5 Comedian Hoaxes Exposed By Snopes, 2024 Edition
After a slew of fatal fake news last year, comedians escaped death hoaxes in 2024. Mostly anyway. We already debunked the rumor that Chevy Chase was making another Christmas Vacation movie, but plenty of other comedy-adjacent con jobs tried to fool us this year.
Here are five more comedian hoaxes from 2024 that fact-checking site Snopes quickly put the kibosh on…
Steve Harvey Is Dead — Again
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Poor Steve Harvey. After four different death hoaxes in 2023, he continued to pass away in 2024 — at least according to sketchy social media posts, YouTube videos and even paid ads.
Snopes determined those paid links were from Chinese companies promoting Google Play downloads for sketchy news apps. Safe to say that downloading “Local News: Breaking & Latest” is probably a dumb idea.
Thankfully for Family Feud fans, Snopes determined Harvey was still with us by turning on the radio and hearing a live broadcast of The Steve Harvey Morning Show. For a guy who keeps dying, Harvey sure keeps busy.
Chris Rock Won a $40 Million Lawsuit Against Will Smith
The “news” that Rock beat Smith in court to the tune of 40 million smackers went viral in August. But not only did the comedian fail to win a lawsuit, he’s never brought one. Rock didn’t even file a police report after the incident.
Snopes has a credible theory that the rumor is based on factual reports that Rock received $40 million from Netflix for two comedy specials. The deal was brokered well before the 2022 Academy Awards, however.
CBS Gave Jay Leno Millions for a New, “Non-Woke” Talk Show
It’s easy to see why comedy fans got confused by this post from June — Leno always seems game to take network cash, even when it comes at the expense of colleagues like David Letterman or Conan O’Brien.
Facebook fans were down for a new show. “Awesome, hope it is true,” wrote one enlightened user. “All the late nite shows are full of woke idiots, not worth watching, unless you live in the basement at moms!”
Snopes had no trouble sniffing this one out since the post came from SpaceX Fanclub, an account that pretty clearly labels itself as satire.
Jimmy Kimmel Quit His Show After Trump Re-election
Kimmel was a popular Snopes topic in 2024. In addition to the rumor about his show ending, online rumors claimed he’d lost $500 million in deals over his political jokes. The good folks over at SpaceX Fanclub were responsible for that one too. Apparently, “lie” is what passes for “joke” over at the Fanclub.
As for the rumors that Kimmel was leaving the airwaves altogether? That bit of fake news was spread by SpaceX Mania, an account with a familiar-sounding name. It’s just one more falsehood, er, satirical headline that was swallowed whole by oblivious social media users. As The New York Times reported, throwing the word “satire” somewhere in the text has become a popular Facebook workaround for spreaders of fake news.
Jim Carrey Wrote Funny Prison Letters to Tupac
This one went viral on Reddit in May, but it’s a recycled bit of unfounded folklore that’s been circulating since 2017. 2024 also saw viral posts featuring Carrey and Tupac “clubbing” together — an image that Snopes also labeled as fake. (That’s Mickey Rourke’s body with Carrey’s head Photoshopped on.)
Over the years, several outlets reported that Carrey was refusing to share the contents of his letters to Tupac. Snopes, however, cannot find a scrap of evidence that he wrote such letters in the first place. Neither Tupac or Carrey ever mentioned writing to one another. Snopes labels this one unfounded — it can’t prove that the comedian didn’t write some postcards, but there’s no reason to believe he did.
