5 Legendary Comedy Rumors That Snopes Labeled As ‘False’
God bless Snopes, the online fact-checker that constantly assures us Steve Harvey is not dead. The site has disproven several ridiculous comedy rumors over the years. Some that sound credible (see Robin Williams, below), and others that are just downright ridiculous.
Here are five times that Snopes told us not to believe every comedian rumor we read…
Robin Williams’ Contracts Required Movies to Hire the Unhoused
Snopes has been debunking this one since 2014, but it’s still out there. Supposedly, a Williams contract rider required production companies to hire at least 10 unhoused people on every one of his movies. Thanks to that clause, Williams “helped approximately 1,520 homeless people” during his career, one Redditor claimed just last month, a claim that’s been repeated on X, Facebook, Imgur, Instagram and YouTube, using the logic that if you read it online, it must be true.
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While Williams did a lot of work on behalf of the unhoused, including several years as co-host of Comic Relief, Snopes has found no evidence of an actual contractual obligation.
Comedy Central Fired Michelle Wolf After Her Appearance at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner
After Wolf decimated Donald Trump and Sarah Sanders at the 2018 dinner, a website called Daily World Update published some startling news: “The entertainment industry is reeling this morning after one of their rising stars, Michelle Wolf, has been fired from her show on Comedy Central. She was also dismissed as a contributing writer on The Daily Show. The move comes after Wolf’s brutal takedown of Sarah Huckabee Sanders at the White House Correspondents’ dinner.”
Nopes, says Snopes. Wolf had a deal with Netflix at the time, not Comedy Central. And no one issued apologies. Turns out Daily World Update was one of those “funny” sites that publishes seemingly straight news stories under the guise of comedy (just without the jokes or satirical intent). The site later published another story claiming Hulu yanked a Wolf comedy special — just as false and just as devoid of humor.
Elon Musk Sued the Pants Off of Kathy Griffin
Here’s another story from one of those sites that publishes stories they claim are satirical but are simply false: “Confirmed: Elon Musk Is Suing The Pants Off of Kathy Griffin” read the headline. The problem, as always, comes when several users share the news on their social media feeds as established fact.
Snopes’ decision: “Labeled Satire.” The poster, a Facebook account called America — Love It or Leave It, describes itself on its profile page as part of “a network of trollery. Nothing on this page is real.” Snopes needs a “Labeled Trolling” category because lying isn’t satire.
Soupy Sales Snuck Smutty Jokes into His Kid Show
Soupy hosted a popular kids’ show in the 1950s and 1960s featuring puppets and pies in the face. While The Soupy Sales Show was hipper than the average kiddie program, it didn’t deserve its reputation as the place where kids learned dirty jokes. Viewers swore they heard Sales deliver salacious punchlines like this:
- “What starts with 'F' and ends with 'UCK’? A fire truck!”
- “I took my wife to a baseball game — I kissed her on the strikes, and she kissed me on the balls.”
- “I climbed up a tree and kissed my girl between the limbs.”
All false, says Snopes. “I got so annoyed at these stories that I used to have a standing offer of $10,000 cash to anyone who could prove that I said any of the things that people claim I’ve said,” Sales wrote in his autobiography.
His explanation? “Kids would come home and they’d tell a dirty joke, you know, grade school humor, and the parents would say, ‘Where’d you hear that?’ And they’d say The Soupy Sales Show, because I happened to have the biggest show in town. And they’d call another person and say, ‘Gladys, did you hear the joke that Soupy Sales was telling on his show?’ and the word of mouth goes on and on.”
Adam Sandler Is a Comedy Nostradamus
Some internet denizens believe Sandler predicted the siege at Waco, a missing Malaysian jetliner and the death of Princess Diana — all via cryptic one-liners in his movies and stand-up.
Snopes didn’t have trouble tracking down how this one got started — an actual comedy site, Clickhole, posted a funny story in 2014 called “5 Tragedies Weirdly Predicted By Adam Sandler.”
But over the years, the Clickhole connection got lost. People began copying and pasting the “predictions” as fact, claiming weird bits of Happy Gilmore dialogue were real even though they never existed. Sandler is capable of generating huge numbers on Netflix, but as far as Snopes can tell, he can’t foresee the future.
