Tom Cruise's Fake Butt

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About

Tom Cruise's Fake Butt refers to a conspiracy theory regarding American actor Tom Cruise wearing a prosthetic buttocks in a shot in the 2008 film Valkyrie. Cruise has publicly denied the allegations.

Origin

On August 20th, 2017, Twitter ^[1] user @iluvbutts247 posted a picture of Tom Cruise bent over in the film Valkyrie. They captioned the picture "hello, please, i present the theory that for one single shot in Valkyrie (2008), at 5:12, tom cruise wears a fake butt. observe:" The post (shown below) received more than 17,000 retweets and 66,000 likes in six weeks.

Spread

Over the next week, several Redditors posted about the picture on the subreddits /r/ImagesOfThe2000s,^[6] /r/Funny,^[7] /r/shittymoviedetails^[8] and more.

Shortly after the tweet went viral, several news and media outlets covered the popularity of the theory, including Mashable,^[2] Jezebel,^[3] AOL,^[4] BuzzFeed ^[5] and more.

Tom Cruise's Denial

On September 27th, 2017, Tom Cruise responded to reports that he had been wearing a fake buttocks in Valkyrie in an interview with Screen Rant.^[9] He said.

"I have no idea. There was no prosthetic in Valkyrie. No.[…]It’s me. It’s not CGI, it’s me. I do my own mooning in films. So let it be known – I do my own mooning."

That day, Twitter user @iluvbutts247 refuted Tom Cruise's dismissal with a variation on a quote from the 2010 film The Social Network. They told The Daily Dot:^[10]

"I think if Tom Cruise wants to sit on prosthetics and call himself thicc, he has the right to give it a try, but there’s no requirement that I enjoy sitting here listening to people lie. This ordeal has part of my attention--it has the minimum amount. The rest of my attention is back at the offices of ILuvButts247, where my colleagues and I are doing butt things that no one in Hollywood, including and especially Tom Cruise’s flat ass, are physically or thickly capable of doing."

Several media outlets covered Tom Cruise's response, including Entertainment Weekly,^[11] The Daily Dot, HuffPost^[12] and more. Additionally, Twitter^[13] published a Moments page about Cruise's response.