About

The Celebrity Death Prank is a prank popularized on TikTok where people tell their parent, friend or relative that their favorite celebrity died and film the reaction. The prank became popularized on the app on Christmas Eve in December 2022 as people returned home for the holidays and began pulling it on their family members.

Origin

It is unclear who started the celebrity death prank, but the earliest videos following the trend were uploaded on December 24th, 2022. On that day, numerous TikTokers posted videos telling their family members that their favorite celebrity suddenly died. For example, on that date, TikToker^[1] @coreyindahause posted a video where he tells his mother that Donald Trump died, inspiring shock in her, garnering over 450,000 views in three days (shown below).

Spread

The trend became increasingly popular over the following days. On December 25th, 2022, TikToker^[2] @fatimahlb posted a video telling her mother that Idris Elba died, garnering over 2 million views in two days (shown below, left). On the same day, Twitter^[5] user @heyyitsjanea shared a compilation of the videos, garnering over 169,000 likes in two days. On December 26th, TikToker^[3] @terresamarria posted a video telling her mother that Kris Jenner died, garnering over 950,000 views in a day (shown below, right). That day, TMZ^[4] reported on the trend.