One of the internet's favorite pastimes is perpetrating outlandish celebrity rumors.
Some of them, like Arnold Schwarzenegger's love child with his maid, turn out to be true.
But most of them are either total fabrications or simply the result of an online game of
telephone that got out of hand.
Lots of stars choose to simply remain silent on their personal fake news stories, but others
have spoken up to set the record straight.
Here's some false celebrity gossip everyone believed for way too long.
Bankrolled booty
It's a fact that celebrities have taken out insurance policies on body parts they're famous
for.
And one of the most famous claims is for JLo's derriere.
But is booty insurance a real thing?
Playmate Holly Madison admitted to People that Lloyd's of London insured her breasts
for $1 million after she landed a gig to appear nude in the Las Vegas show, Peepshow.
But in JLo's case, booty insurance just isn't necessary.
Although she is famous for having one of the most noteworthy backsides in all of pop culture,
showing it off isn't JLo's only bread and butter.
On her Carpool Karaoke appearance, JLo dispelled the booty rider rumors once and for all.
“Did you insure your butt for a million dollars?”
“No!”
“No.”
"No.
There is no such thing as that!"
And while, JLo does have a song called "Booty" that is literally an ode to her plentiful
posterior...
“Big, big booty / But you got a big booty / Big, big booty / But you got a big booty.”
...she's also a cross-platform diva and branding mogul who isn't worried about sudden unemployment
or relying on a claim check made out to her butt.
Bloody bling
Of all of the creepy things Angelina Jolie has actually done — like getting weirdly
intimate with her brother on the red carpet — the one that actually got blown out of
proportion was the claim that she and Billy Bob Thornton were wearing vials of each other's
blood around their necks.
It was plausible given their eccentric personalities, but it's really not as crazy as everyone made
it out to be.
Opening up about the infamous accessory in 2008, Jolie told Entertainment Weekly:
"It was never a vial anyway.
It was like a flower press.
It was like from a slight cut on your finger and you press your fingerprint in.
It was kind of a sweet gesture.
I thought it was kind of romantic."
But if Angelina Jolie is the queen of bizarre rumors, then Michael Jackson was definitely
the king.
King of Pop-sicles
One of the most ludicrous and enduring Jackson myths was that Michael supposedly slept in
a hyperbaric chamber.
The story started in 1986 with a photo the National Enquirer ran of Jackson laying down
inside an actual hyperbaric chamber.
It was alleged that he bought the machine, because he believed it would allow him to
live to the ripe old age of 150.
While that is now sadly ironic — since the pop icon died so young — people were quick
to believe the rumor because of his unending quirkiness and fondness for plastic surgery.
The truth isn't nearly as entertaining.
In a rare all-access 1993 interview with Oprah at his home, O revealed that she didn't see
the chamber anywhere.
“I cannot find the oxygen chamber anywhere in the house.”
“That story is so crazy.
I mean, it’s one of those tabloid things.
It’s completely made up.”
When she gave Michael the chance to explain, he said that he was merely checking out a
piece of medical equipment in the Michael Jackson Burn Unit of Brotman Medical Center
where he'd donated a generous portion of his settlement money from a burn accident during
a Pepsi commercial shoot.
The "I Kind of Wonder" Years
Marilyn Manson has been denying rumors that he played Paul on The Wonder Years since 1997.
In his keynote address to the CMJ Music Marathon, Manson said,
"I was not on The Wonder Years.
But the thing with rumors is that it doesn't matter what's true.
What's popular is what people believe."
Still to this day the shock rocker was still batting away the same lie, but he doesn't
seem to mind.
Josh Saviano, the real dude who played Paul, didn't mind the rumor when it started either.
Saviano told Yahoo:
"I had no idea who Marilyn Manson was at the time.
It became a progressively more entertaining story line amongst me and my friends."
Meanwhile, the two stars have never appeared together...so maybe it might turn out to be
true after all?
Sesame Street
There has been talk for some time that the felted odd-couple of Sesame Street, Bert and
Ernie, were actually...more than friends.
According to Cinema Blend, the theory that Bert and Ernie were a couple really gained
traction around 2014 after the Supreme Court decision that effectively legalized gay marriage
came into play.
After the rumor gained momentum, a change.org petition started circulating, urging Sesame
Street to "Let Bert & Ernie get married," as if the two muppets had been repeatedly
denied before then.
CNN reported:
“The gay buzz has been around for years.
But now there’s an online petition asking Sesame Street to let Bert and Ernie get married.”
Amazingly, the show responded to the petition on its Facebook page saying:
"Bert and Ernie are best friends.
They were created to teach preschoolers that people can be good friends with those who
are very different from themselves.
Even though they are identified as male characters and possess many human traits and characteristics,
they remain puppets, and do not have a sexual orientation."
That's fine...but tell that to Miss Piggy who has pretty clear intentions for a felt
green frog.
[Crowd noise]
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