Conspiracy theories have been circulating since before the 19th century. Honestly, knowing humans, probably even longer. Some of these conspiracies really make for some controversial legacies (flat Earth, anyone?). Combining this with our fascination with celebrities’ lives and their downfall, we’ve concocted some weird theories. Throw the dark world of music in there, and you might as well have made Snow White’s poison apple. From Illuminati associations to animal body parts, here are the top 10 weird conspiracies in music.

10 Supertramp Warned Us About 9/11

Supertramp is an English rock band that started in London in 1970. Their 1979 album “Breakfast In America” had a cover that one listener claims predicted the terrorist attacks in New York on September 11, 2001. The album cover shows the perspective of an airplane window with New York City and the Twin Towers in the background. Outside is a flight attendant holding orange juice. 

The plane theme combined with New York City is only the first connection of 9/11 with Supertramp. Conspiracy theorists claim that when the image is flipped, the “u” and “p” of the band’s name spells out 911 above the twin towers. They also say the word “Breakfast” predicts that the attacks happened early in the morning. Although coincidences are there, it doesn’t seem likely a British band knew Al Qaida would attack New York 22 years before it actually happened. 

9 Courtney Love Killed Kurt Cobain

Kurt Donald Cobain was an American musician famous for being the guitarist, songwriter, and frontman for the rock band Nirvana. Courtney Michelle Love is an American singer-songwriter (best known fronting her band Hole) and actress who was married to Kurt Cobain. The two celebrities wed in 1992 after only four months of dating. 

Cobain committed suicide by gunshot in 1994 after suffering from depression. His first suicide attempt was in Rome just six weeks earlier. 

The theory, posited by Tom Grant, states that Love was responsible for her husband’s death. Grant was the private investigator Love hired to find Cobain after the musician ran away from a rehabilitation center following his first suicide attempt. In the documentary “Soaked in Bleach,” Grant claims that Cobain couldn’t have pulled the shotgun’s trigger because there was too much heroin in his system.

Grant also believed the suicide note was fake. Fans were ready to accept this theory as truth. Most were already upset by Love’s release of her album “Live Through This” days after Cobain’s death. They believed she hired a hitman to kill her husband because divorce was on the horizon. The Seattle Police Department and people close to Cobain, including the Nirvana manager Danny Goldberg disagree with the theory. 

8 Stevie Wonder Isn’t Blind

Professionally known as Stevie Wonder, Stevland Hardaway Morris is one of music’s most successful songwriters and musicians. He is considered a soul, jazz, funk, rock, and pop legend. He’s also blind. But not everyone believes this legend is vision-impaired. In 2014, a video circulated that looks like Stevie Wonder caught a microphone that Paul McCartney accidentally knocked over on stage. Conspiracists are asking, how can a blind man do that?

Conspiracists also point out that he includes imagery in the songs he writes and enjoys front-row seats at basketball games. Besides the problematic and ableist support to this theory—not everyone who is legally blind is completely without vision—in Stevie’s case, it’s not true.

Born six weeks premature, Stevie Wonder became blind shortly after his birth from the oxygen used in the hospital incubator to stabilize him. Still, the fact that he enjoys joking about his vision-impaired status, like when he said he’d flown a plane before, doesn’t always help calm the conspiracists. 

7 Rihanna Is In The Illuminati 

Robyn Rihanna Fenty is a famous singer from Saint Michael, Barbados. She’s had multiple hits since her career started in the 2000s. In 2019, she sold a record-breaking 251 million downloads and ringtones. For someone so successful, it’s no surprise Rihanna has had a variety of conspiracies to her name — everything from having non-blinking, reptilian eyes to framing Chris Brown. Another notable theory is that she is part of the Illuminati.

And not only is she a member, but some fans claim she also had an arranged marriage with Chris Brown, another suspected member. The rumors started in 2012 when Rihanna got a slanted cross tattoo on her neck. The diagonal cross is one of the symbols of the Freemasons, and fans believed she was showing her alliance. 

In 2018, the belief that Rihanna was part of the Illuminati created some controversy during her visit to Senegal. Rihanna was flying to Dakar to attend Global Partnership for Education conference. But she faced protests from 30 religious groups against Freemasonry. Oumar Diagne, the spokesman for the coalition of religious groups, stated, “Rihanna does not even hide it. She is part of the Illuminati.” 

Rihanna has had references to Illuminati symbols in her music video since 2012. For example, her S&M video calls her the Illuminati Princess, and the Umbrella video is filled with pyramids. However, it was more to play into the publicity the rumors brought.

6 Jimi Hendrix’s Manager Murdered Him

James Marshall Hendrix, better known as Jimi Hendrix, is an American singer, songwriter, and musician. He is one of the 20th century’s most influential electric guitarists. Hendrix died in September 1970 from choking on his own vomit. The post-mortem indicated his stomach was filled with barbiturates, also known as sleep-inducing drugs or muscle relaxants. Hendrix’s death was written off as a tragic accident until James “Tappy” Wright provided a different explanation. In his 2009 book “Rock Roadie,” Wright explains that Hendrix’s manager, Michael Jeffery, murdered the guitarist. 

Wright claims Jeffery force-fed the drugs to Hendrix so he could collect the life insurance. Wright explains that Jeffrey was afraid he would be replaced with a new manager and was also the beneficiary of Hendrix’s $2 million life insurance policy. In the book, Wright explains that Jeffrey confessed to him in 1971, saying he “had to do it.” Since Jeffrey died in a plane crash over France in 1973, we cannot hear his defense to these accusations.

5 Paul McCartney Died In 1966

Sir James Paul McCartney is an English songwriter and co-lead vocalist and bassist for the Beatles. Although McCartney sang live in 2018 and 2019 for his Freshen Up Tour, some believe this wasn’t the original Beatle. Conspiracy theorists claim the real McCartney died in 1966 in a car crash. To hide the tragedy, the Beatles asked an imposter, Billy Shears, to take McCartney’s place. These claims started when someone read into the lyrics of the Beatles songs as hints of McCartney’s death. In October 1969, an unknown caller called into the WKNR radio show. They explained that the words “Turn me on, dead man” from the song “Number Nine, Number Nine,” and “I buried Paul” from “Strawberry Fields Forever” confirmed McCartney was dead. 

More clues and justifications surfaced. For example, when the album cover of “Abbey Road” was released, fans pointed out that McCartney held a cigarette in his right hand. The real McCartney is left-handed. Fans also claimed he looked out of step with the other band members. In the song “Glass Onion,” John Lennon sings, “Well, here’s another clue for you all, the walrus was Paul.” Fans assumed “walrus” is Greek for a corpse, and this was another clue McCartney was dead.

4 Jay-Z Can Travel Back In Time

Shawn Corey Carter, stage name Jay-Z, is a rapper and producer also famous for being married to Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter. The couple has various conspiracies surrounding them, but the weirdest must be Jay-Z’s time-traveling abilities. The conspiracy that he can time-travel all started from a photograph by Sid Grossman of a Harlem scene in 1939. The man in the photo looks like Jay-Z and reflects the rapper’s mannerisms. A second theory then emerged that if he can’t travel back in time, then he must be a vampire who has stayed alive all these years. How else can immortality be explained?

The more likely explanation for the facial similarities of the man in the photo is Jay-Z is related somehow. Perhaps a twice-removed cousin of his great grandfather. 

3 The CIA Assisanated Bob Marley

Robert Nesta “Bob” Marley was a Jamaican musician, singer, and songwriter considered the pioneer of reggae. In 2018, stories started circulating on social media that a former agent of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Bill Oxley, confessed he killed Marley. The death-bed confession claims that the CIA was responsible for infecting Marley with cancer viruses and bacteria. Since the release of the Bob Marley Documentary on Netflix indicates the CIA admitted to keeping tabs on Marley in the 1970s, it easily made fans believe the agency was behind his death. People have tried to debunk this theory. They found no Bill Oxley associated with the CIA. The photo used in the circulated story was also a stock photo by a Polish photographer, Katarzyna Bia?asiewicz. 

This story may not be true, but Marley did pass away from brain cancer that started with an infection in his toe. There was also an assassination attempt on his life in 1976 that was linked to the CIA. The two gunmen involved claimed they were contracted by the CIA in exchange for guns and drugs. So, perhaps it’s not so wild some would assume the CIA contributed to his early death in 1983. 

2 Elvis Is Still Alive

Elvis Aaron Presley has often been coined the “King of Rock and Roll.” Although some celebrities were falsely claimed dead, fans found it hard to believe Elvis was gone. They said he was still alive. After he died in 1977, there were multiple headlines of people seeing Elvis alive during the 1980s and 90s. Examples include seeing him buying a fuse in Michigan, getting phone calls from him, and seeing him as a background extra on the film Home Alone. Gail Brewer-Giorgio even wrote a book titled “Is Elvis Alive” in 1988.

The theory was Elvis faked his death to get away from the pressure of fame. Fans believed his coffin, which was difficult to carry, had a cooling system in it. The truth is it was made of copper. Others believed he found a body double or dummy for his funeral since the body didn’t look like him. With his heavy drug use and the reality that dead bodies have pale complexions, it is normal for people to not recognize corpses. 

1 Gene Simmons Has a Cow’s Tongue

Gene Simmons is the bassist and frontman of the rock band Kiss. With Kiss’s outrageous and sometimes bizarre performances for its time during the 1970s, it’s of little surprise a weird conspiracy emerged around Simmons. During performances, Simmons often waggled his tongue at the audience. It was long and pointy. A rumor then emerged that his tongue was such a way because he had cow’s tongue grafted onto his own to extend it. The rumor even extends to beliefs he had his mouth enlarged to make room for the tongue. Simmons has admitted this is his favorite myth about him.

D.C. comics began in the 1930s, and over the last century, has grown into an entertainment empire that spans comics, television, animation, movies, and oh-so-much merchandise. It has built a vast and fervent fan base who tend to be both heavily invested and outspoken. As a result, D.C. fans created a veritable anthology of fan theories designed to explain and connect every single facet of D.C. continuity, no matter how small or otherwise easily explainable.

As true as this is for the comics and animated shows, it is especially true for the movies. Because the D.C.E.U. has brought some of the world’s most popular characters to the big screen in a… less than consistent way, fans have taken it upon themselves to fill in Warner Brothers’ gaps and build their bridges for them. Here are ten D.C. fan theories/conspiracies that, whether true or not, are worth reading.

10 Wonder Woman and the Native American God

In Wonder Woman, the titular Amazonian assembles a ragtag crew of soldiers and spies to help her navigate through war-stricken Europe, mainly because Captain America had already done that, and it seemed kinda fun. One of the colorful characters she collects is a Native American nicknamed Chief. Chief later reveals his real name is Napi.

Napi is a god in Blackfoot mythology who shaped the entire world. A demiurge. That makes him in one sense analogous to what the Christians would call God with a capital G. As the film’s antagonist is the Greek god of war Ares, gods are not off the table, and Napi’s actor Eugene Brave Rock has confirmed he is indeed the Blackfoot god.

9 Lois Lane has Psychic Powers

Some fan theories, though clever and comprehensive, are essentially just fan apologies for filmmakers’ mistakes. These big tentpole movies are made by committees overseeing more committees, so it’s natural that some continuity is lost and some disbelief fails to be suspended. One such theory is that which posits that Lois Lane is herself a metahuman.

The theory states that in “Batman Vs. Superman” (BvS), Lois Lane has superpowers of her own, most notably psychic powers. It’s the only way to explain, for example, Superman saving her from the terrorists, from being pushed off the skyscraper, and from drowning (boy, she really is pigeon-holed) despite not being aware of any of these situations. She had to have psychically alerted him to her distress. That, and she heard a dying Superman whisper to Batman to save Martha, even though she wasn’t in the room. Plus, she knew about the kryptonite spear and how to use it despite no one explaining it to her. She may be a two-dimensional plot device, but at least her mind-powers can explain it.

8 Aquaman Used Whales to Save Superman

In “Man of Steel,” while Clark Kent is out traveling the globe to grow the perfect grief beard, he is forced to save the crew of an offshore oil rig after it catches fire and collapses. After Clark holds up a portion of the rig so the workers can escape, he falls in the ocean below, unconscious. The sequence, by the way, includes a close-up on his sweaty abs but not a shot of him ever going in the water because… Zack Snyder.

Clark awakens in the water and sees two whales float towards him. The next we know, he emerges onshore. Again, no explanation. Naturally, due to, well just the presence of water, fans think of Aquaman. They theorize that he was watching and used his whale friends to give Clark a ride to shore. Aquaman himself, i.e., Jason Momoa, has confirmed that this theory is true.

7 Watchmen is DCEU Canon

The 2019 conclusion of D.C. Comics’ “Doomsday Clock” series canonically connects the D.C. Universe and the Watchmen universe. In the D.C.E.U. movies, the two worlds are at least spiritually connected as the architect of both is the same person, Zack Snyder. And Snyder has been sure to include easter eggs in the films that hint at the two worlds being connected. As a result, several fan theories have arisen to officially establish a canon connection.

For one, many have pointed to the anti-metahuman populace in the D.C.E.U. movies being potentially caused by the actions of earlier heroes who were darker, more flawed, and failed to prevent catastrophe, i.e., the Watchmen. Another hypothesis is that the Watchmen’s omnipotent Dr. Manhattan is pulling the D.C.E.U.’s strings,-resetting canon and establishing/curating the multiverse. The theories are more plausible than ever, thanks to their source material backing.

6 Marvel Bribed Rotten Tomatoes

Instead of canon and lore, this conspiracy is about real-world critical reactions. When “BvS” came out, its review scores on aggregate sites like Rotten Tomatoes quickly plummeted. Many fans expressed their belief that Marvel parent company Disney paid off critics to give the competing “BvS” a low score. This was a widely circulated news story and trended on Twitter for a bit.

The problem is that the trend was most vocally started by screenwriter Max Landis, notable controversy-magnet and purveyor of poorly-written sensationalism. When critics confronted Landis, he quickly backtracked, but the damage was done. D.C.’s fanbase, which at times can be a tad bit *ahem* Ayn-Rand-ish, seized on the idea as a way to explain why their movie wasn’t universally adored. After all, that is easier than acknowledging its glaring problems with writing, directing, acting, editing, tone, structure, internal logic, pacing, and consistency.

5 Alfred Only Dreamt that Bruce Survived

Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy ended with Batman seemingly dying in a sacrificial explosion. He is mourned and commemorated, and Gotham moves on, presumably with a spandex-clad Joseph Gordon Levitt prowling its rooftops. But we’re left with a treat. When a grieving Alfred visits his favorite cafe in Florence, Italy, he sees Bruce Wayne alive and well, having a nice day out with his partner-in-brooding Selena Kyle, aka Catwoman.

However, many fans think this is just Alfred dreaming as a way to cope with the trauma of Bruce’s death. Earlier in the movie, Alfred indeed said that he had a fantasy of finding Bruce there, and in addition, never told Bruce which cafe it was. Christopher Nolan has said that the sequence is not a dream. I posit here that Nolan saying that was part of the dream, too. That could theoretically mean we’re all a part of Alfred’s dream, and I, for one, am okay with that.

4 The Joker is a Robin

At one point in “BvS,” we see an empty, vandalized Robin suit and are left to assume that the Joker murdered Robin. For comic fans, that naturally brings up Jason Todd, the second Robin, who the Joker indeed murdered back in the 80s due to a reader poll. But director Zack Snyder said that the dead Robin was “Richard,” meaning the first Robin, Dick Grayson.

This led many to question if the Joker, the Jared Leto version, was himself, Jason Todd. It would explain some of the Joker’s tattoos, which appear to be feathers and birds; the ‘J’ tattoo under his eye, which would stand for ‘Jason’ instead of ‘Joker’; Batman’s extreme cynicism and world-weariness; and Batman’s line “20 years in Gotham. How many good guys are left? How many stayed that way?”

3 Future Injustice

In both “BvS” and “Justice League,” we see visions of the future, dubbed by fans as “Knightmares,” which is a pretty cool name. They are bleak and show a dystopian hellscape in which Superman has turned evil, and Batman has to collect metahumans to stand against him. Fans have wondered if this is a possible setup for the popular Injustice storyline.

In that comic series, the Joker tricks Superman into killing Lois Lane, which causes Supes to spiral into evil and totalitarianism. That does seem pretty close to the visions. Zack Snyder has said coyly that the Joker is in some way responsible for the Knightmare future, which lends support to the idea that the Knightmare future is the Injustice future. We may still be able to see it play out if the #Snyderverse is ever #restored.

2 WWII Never Happened

“Wonder Woman” is odd in that, despite its protagonist and antagonist being characters from Greek myth, its setting is very real—the front lines of World War One—and some of its characters very real. For this theory, the character that matters most is Erich Ludendorff, a very real German general from that era. In the movie, Wonder Woman stabs Ludendorff and kills him, but in real life, Ludendorff survived World War One and went on to play a major role in turning Germany into a fascist empire. He took part in two attempted coups of the German government (called putsches), worked with the Nazi party, and helped perpetuate anti-Semitic ideologies.

The theory, which is a logical assumption, says that because Wonder Woman killed off Ludendorff in WWI, it prevented him from exerting his influence on German society in the 20 and 30s, thereby weakening the Nazi cause. Removing this gear from the Nazi machine may have caused it to lose enough steam to never initiate World War II.

1 Batman is in Arkham

This is one of the oldest comic book theories there is, and though it almost certainly not true, it makes for a fun discussion. It states that Bruce Wayne, not his villains, is a prisoner in Arkham Asylum. His inability to cope with the trauma of his parent’s death drove him insane, and he ended up a permanent inmate at Arkham.

The Batman persona is just one of Wayne’s psychoses, and his villains really just his doctors. Adding to the theory is the fact that many of Batman’s rogues are, in fact, doctors. Further, the villain Scarecrow, who is able to provoke the most fear in Wayne with his chemical injections, is an actual psychiatrist. It is funny to imagine the Batman comic ending at some point with him waking up in a straitjacket and realizing it was all a hallucination. Naturally, there would be riots in the streets.

If you want to feel justified in patronizing a company with a dubious history, calling any negative story against them a “conspiracy theory” should fit the bill. The main problem is that the term, which is rumored to have been coined by the CIA for this exact purpose, is a convenient way to discount valid concerns by associating them with crackpots and conmen.

Still, it’s common knowledge at this point that some companies do participate in shady transactions from time to time—which makes these conspiracies even more jarring. But whether it’s a crackpot tale or the truth staring you in the face, the conspiracies are unavoidable. Here are 10 powerful companies tied to conspiracy theories.

10 Bayer

Bayer is best known for inventing aspirin. Founded in 1863 by Friedrich Bayer, this company started as a small, three-person dye company. It eventually became a pharmaceutical Goliath selling aspirin, phenobarbital, and heroin. Yep, heroin, or as they called it at the time, a “non-addictive cough suppressant” for children. Post-WWI hard times forced Bayer to temporarily merge with several competitors to form IG Farben. IG Farben was the company that infamously produced Zyklon B for the Nazis. They were one of their biggest contractors in WWII, and even ran their own concentration camps. 

Today’s Bayer invests heavily in research and development, which allows them to constantly release new products. But not everyone is willing to let go of their Nazi connection. A fair bit of suspicion remains as to what they’re selling nowadays. In 2016 Bayer merged with Monsanto and is now intimately involved with pharmaceuticals and agriculture worldwide. It probably didn’t help their reputation much after it came out that Bayer knowingly infected thousands of their own customers with HIV. (Don’t worry, it was in the ’80s).

9 NutraSweet

The NutraSweet company is a subsidiary of GD Searle, spun off specifically to rebrand the chemical Aspartame. Aspartame, more commonly known as NutraSweet, was discovered by GD Searle in 1965. NutraSweet is 200 times sweeter than sugar with practically 0 calories. Unfortunately, its approval process was pretty shady.

It was initially banned by the FDA after a 1980 Board of Inquiry found that this potent excitotoxin led to a high chance of “inducing brain tumors.” This did not please Donald Rumsfeld, who was then Secretary of Defense under Reagan as well as Chairman of GD Searle. Rumsfeld publicly vowed to “call in his markers” to get the ban reversed. With the help of the new FDA Commissioner, fellow Reagan appointee Arthur Hayes Hull, Jr., they immediately arranged to have the ban overturned. (Hull went on to do public relations for both GD Searle and Monsanto, which purchased GD Searle in 1985.) 

Considerable political power was leveraged into getting NutraSweet unreservedly approved for the US food supply, regardless of reports of serious negative health impacts. Today, you’ll find Aspartame in pretty much any gum, diet soda, or children’s vitamin sold in the US. Aspartame is even added to some milk brands. 

8 DeBeers

If you ever proposed to someone and decided to show your love by giving them a diamond, you can thank DeBeers for giving you that idea. Started by businessman Cecil Rhodes in 1880, DeBeers is a billion-dollar diamond business with a wild history. It is responsible for the marketing campaign convincing people to buy expensive diamond engagement rings. DeBeers was also hard at work artificially restricting their own supply of diamonds in order to set prices. But wait, you say, aren’t diamonds really valuable? Nope.

“Diamonds are intrinsically worthless.” -DeBeers Chairman Nicky Oppenheimer.

It’s not even disputed that DeBeers is in the habit of fixing diamond prices; they even pled guilty to it back in 2004. While DeBeers today is more focused on the brand and brick-and-mortar store aspect, their horrible history in South Africa, price-fixing, the nefarious ad campaigns and connection with the Oppenheimer family lead many to question the current state of diamonds, and whether that rock on her finger is really worth two-months salary.

7 Dominion

Americans take their elections very seriously, and when it’s over, we want everyone to come to a consensus on what happened and go home. Obviously, it rifles some feathers when that doesn’t happen and people will come up with anything to explain why the results were wrong. A perfect example: Dominion Voting Systems. 

Dominion Voting Systems is an election services company whose machines are used in many states across the US, including a majority of swing states. Accusations of impropriety have plagued the company since the 2020 election. There are theories that China secretly owns Dominion, the machines can switch votes, and there were reports of senators warning of integrity concerns back in 2019. Dominion seems more than ready to fight back against these conspiracy claims with defamation suits.

6 Volkswagen

Most of the conspiracy-laden companies on this list were at least started by a hard-working businessman before the controversies started. But the Nazi Party straight up founded Volkswagen on May 28, 1937. They called it Volkswagenwerk, meaning The People’s Car Company. Hitler wanted a German competitor to Henry Ford and his Model T — an affordable car that could be mass-produced and show the might of Nazi Germany.

And so with the help of Dr. Ferdinand Porsche and Volkswagen, the VW Beetle was born. After the war, Volkswagen re-dubbed the car the Beetle and became a top-selling auto importer for the United States.

Since then, they’ve enjoyed a fairly benign reputation and the company was even considered a leader in green technology. Except on September 2015, the company sold nearly 600,000 cars designed to circumvent emissions tests. In response to the scandal, Volkswagen Head of US Ops Michael Horn blamed the over half-a-million fraudulent cars on “a couple of software engineers.” We don’t know how far up the fraud goes, but it’s alleged that Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn not only knew what the engineers were up to but authorized the cover-up himself. 

5 Nestle

When I think Nestle, I think of chocolate — I don’t think of bottled water. But water sales are actually huge for Nestle, despite activists urging them to stop. Besides issues from creating plastic waste, Nestle actually lobbied the World Water Council to change their definition of clean water as a “human right” to a “human need,” and promptly got into the business of buying up clean water supplies around the world in order to sell the water back to the populous at huge markups. These practices have fueled a lot of speculation that Nestle has plans to privatize water. 

Nestle was also a big player in the baby formula market, creating ad campaigns that sold it as a healthy alternative to breast milk. When demand in the States faltered, they started marketing formula to Africa in the 70s, which happened to coincide with a huge uptick in infant fatalities. The WHO and UNICEF traced the millions of baby deaths from malnutrition and diarrhea to increased use of formula as now-dependant mothers had only contaminated water available to mix it. Nestle responded by blaming the mothers of the infants who died. Not a great look, Nestle.

4 Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola is one of the most recognized brands on Earth. Everyone knows soda isn’t good for you (even after they took the cocaine out of it), but we still drink it anyway. The soft drink behemoth spends millions in brand recognition, in addition to charity, outreach, and public relations. If you’re like me, you’ve seen their vending machines in schools.

Much like the cigarette companies in the 60s, many people are convinced that Coca-Cola, and the rest of “Big Sugar,” are modern-day Marlboro. The conspiracy goes that they secretly fund non-profits to tell Americans that we should focus on exercise, rather than what we eat and drink, to fight obesity. 

It’s not the fact that soda consumption continues to fuel the obesity crisis, but it’s the concerted effort Coke has put into hiding those facts. The company has a history of bribing health officials into keeping quiet and pointing the finger at dietary fat.

3 Google

The first in and best dressed, Google took over the internet search engine market and became synonymous with looking up “stuff.” Don’t believe me? Google it! Between Google, its video-share titan of a website YouTube, and their parent shadow-company Alphabet (don’t speak its name!—it’s like Voldemort or Fight Club or other things you shouldn’t talk about), there are conspiracy theories here aplenty!

Frankly, when a corporation has Don’t Be Evil as the company model, and then drops it, you just know they’re sus. And as many conservatives and anti-establishment voices contend, Google, through the banner of search optimization, is able to silence viewpoints, ideas, and speech that its executives don’t want to spread. In conjunction with whistleblowers, suspicions of Google’s treachery continue to rise.

And then there’s Project Dragonfly, the code-name for the search engine Google built for China. This search engine is specifically designed to track its users and censor any information that the Chinese Communist Party does not want its citizens to know about. Google wasn’t too happy when leaked internal memos shared what they were up to. Though Google now says that they abandoned their work on the project, not everyone is convinced. After all, how much can be believed from a company that sells your data while lying about it?

2 Planned Parenthood

Planned Parenthood provides health and family services to hundreds of thousands of Americans each year. Yes, those services include abortions, but abortions are legal and considered a normal part of modern healthcare by most Americans. So where’s the conspiracy? In short, it was no secret that Planned Parenthood Founder, Margret Sanger was a militant advocate for eugenics.

The conspiracy comes in how hard her loyalists worked to keep her more self-described motivations a secret. But as her own writings and past speeches (including keynoting for the KKK) became common knowledge, Planned Parenthood was forced to distance themselves from their founder.

They removed her name from their buildings and acknowledged their “contributions to historical reproductive harm within communities of color” and Ms. Sanger’s well-documented “racist legacy.” If only it ended there. Unfortunately, allegations of for-profit abortion schemes have put Planned Parenthood in a dark light. A history of whistleblowers jailed over their claims only adds fuel to the fire. 

1 Monsanto

Could this list end any other way? Monsanto has pretty much the worst reputation of any company ever and it seems well-earned. Founded in 1903 by John Francis Queeny and named after his wife Olga Monsanto, the company started making the sweetener saccharin. They were the only company outside of Germany to do so. Soon after, Monsanto started its upward climb by producing much nastier stuff, like PCBs, DDT, and Agent Orange (a defoliant—a chemical used to remove leaves from trees and plants—used in the Vietnam War that resulted in half a million babies with birth defects). 

Lawsuits eventually ensued, and Monsanto got into the Bio Agriculture business, discovering the pesticide Glyphosate, a.k.a. Roundup, and making genetically modified crops that were resistant to it. Though the EPA initially determined Glyphosate was carcinogenic after reports surfaced linking it to cancer, the EPA later claimed it is not. Many remain convinced that Monsanto covered up the link.

In 2016, Bayer purchased Monsanto, the company that is now the world’s largest seed supplier. Theories abound that Monsanto has secretly taken control over the global food supply and the seed banks. And then there’s the Bill Gates connection. Claims that 500,000 Monsanto shares were bought by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have created even more fodder for the paranoid (or the well-informed). After all, if you control the crops, do you control the world?

Celebrity is a powerful force in the world. Whatever it is about an actor, a writer, or a singer that makes them appeal to us can really alter someone’s perception in a strange way. Some fans will be willing to forgive their favorite celebrity of anything, or just believe that they could never do anything wrong. And when a celebrity dies, there are always those who refuse to take it at face value. Thus is born the strange world of celebrity death conspiracies…

10. Bob Marley Shoe Cancer

World famous musician Bob Marley brought reggae music to many who had never experienced it before. Aside from being an icon of Jamaican music, a man known for mixing music and spirituality, and an outspoken advocate of marijuana, he was unfortunately diagnosed with melanoma in 1977. In 1981, Marley passed away from cancer in Miami.

Despite what seems like a pretty open and shut explanation for how the man passed away, there have been some conspiracies relating to what exactly went down. And they’re not entirely fringe ideas, as other popular musicians like Busta Rhymes and T.I. have been prominent advocates of a conspiracy that it wasn’t just cancer that took out Bob Marley, but the CIA.

According to the conspiracy theory an ex-CIA agent named Bill Oxley claimed that he once infected Marley with cancer through his foot. The idea is that the US government wanted to quell the potential revolution that Marley was starting.

As the story goes, Oxley was undercover as a photographer and managed to stab Marley in the toe with cancer, somehow. It was hidden in a pair of Converse shoes that were given to Marley as a gift.

The main problem with the story, aside from the logistics of infecting someone with cancer through his shoe, is that it’s entirely made up. There’s never been a CIA agent named Bill Oxley, and there’s no source for any of this other than the website that originally published the story, which has a long a colorful history of posting completely fake articles disguised as news.

9. The Murder of Kurt Cobain

If you were to talk about the death of Kurt Cobain today there’s a good chance that a fair number of people would just take it for granted that the man was murdered. But if you recall the details of the case, Cobain died by suicide, having taken his own life with a shotgun.

Almost immediately after his death, conspiracy theories began to spread however, many of them pointing the finger at his wife Courtney Love. There were allegations that his suicide note was written in different kinds of handwriting, that there were no fingerprints on the shotgun when police found it, and that a private eye had come forward and confessed to that Love had hired him to murder Cobain in the past.

The theory gained so much traction that more than one movie has actually been made on the topic. Of all the celebrity death conspiracies out there, only a handful get to be so widespread as the Cobain murder theory. 

Within a week of Cobain’s death, a Seattle Public Access television host named Richard Lee began airing episodes of a series called Kurt Cobain was Murdered. 

Private investigator Tom Grant said that he didn’t believe Cobain had the ability to kill himself given how much heroin was in his system at the time. Another musician known as Eldon ‘El Duce’ Hoke claimed that Courtney Love had offered him $50,000 to kill Cobain. After sharing that story, he died several days later when he was hit by a train, which further fueled everyone else’s conspiracy theories.

Despite many people making claims, no evidence has really come to light that definitively proves anything more happened to Kurt Cobain than suicide, especially since that was the official finding.

Still, to this day many people – even from Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain’s inner circle – believe something suspicious went on. The odds are, however, that we’ll never learn the truth – if there’s anything to learn.

8. Avril Lavigne is a Double

Avril Lavigne rose to fame in Canada when she was in her teens and quickly became world famous after the release of her first album in the year 2002. Her fame grew from there and along with it came a very curious conspiracy theory that the Avril Lavigne you know is not the Avril Lavigne you think you know. According to this conspiracy theory, Lavigne actually died in the year 2003.

The storyline for this conspiracy theory is that Lavigne was distraught after the divorce of her parents in 2003 and took her own life. She was replaced by a doppelgänger, at the behest of her record label, who took over duties singing and recording albums, as well as doing live performances.

To make things weirder, there is an extra layer to the conspiracy that says the original Avril might actually still be alive, and she just faked her own death. 

7. Katy Perry is JonBenet Ramsey

Katy Perry became the focus of a celebrity death conspiracy in a completely different way than most of them. As you no doubt know, Katy Perry is alive and well. According to this particular conspiracy she never died, she never faked her own death, and no one planned to murder her. Instead, this theory runs with the premise that Katy Perry is actually JonBenet Ramsey, the six-year-old girl whose death has never been solved.

This very ramshackle theory purports that JonBenet was never actually murdered, and her identity was changed to become pop superstar Katy Perry. Of course, Perry is actually six years older than JonBenet would have been, and there is literally no connection between the two of them. They don’t even really look very much alike.

If anything, this theory should have died on the vine, but somehow it managed to gain some traction and has even had a few popular YouTube videos made about it. The evidence is slim at best, with most of it relating to how one person thinks that JonBenet Ramsey and Katy Perry do, in fact, look sort of alike, and that their families do sort of look alike as well.

6. Morgan Freeman is Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix has taken his rightful place in music history as one of the greatest guitar players to ever live. Many people have wondered what would happen if Hendrix had survived his tragic death at the age of 27. And for some people, at least those who believe in this conspiracy theory, Hendrix did survive.

As the conspiracy goes, Hendrix faked his own death back in 1970. After faking his own death, he reinvented himself as world famous actor Morgan Freeman. Most people who fake their death probably want to hide from the limelight, not somehow become arguably even more famous, but let’s just run with this one.

The evidence for the theory has several facets. First and foremost, Jimi Hendrix is obviously a fan of music, and so is Morgan Freeman (who owns his own blues club in Mississippi). Morgan Freeman didn’t become famous until after Jimi Hendrix died. And finally, Morgan Freeman kind of looks like Jimi Hendrix. 

As you can guess, this evidence is flimsy at best. Morgan Freeman kind of looks like Jimi Hendrix in the same way that Jimi Hendrix kind of looks like Redd Foxx and Dave Chappelle, too. Which is to say that they’re all African-American men.

Even less convincing is the idea that Morgan Freeman rose to prominence after Jimi died. In fact, Morgan Freeman’s career started about six years before Jimi Hendrix died; he just didn’t become very famous until many years later, the way it works with nearly every actor who has to start with small, background roles and work their way up.

5. Bill Hicks Became Alex Jones

In terms of the conspiracies about a celebrity faking their own death and then coming back as somebody else, few of them stretch credulity like the conspiracy that infamous comedian Bill Hicks, who died in 1994, resurrected himself as right-wing radio host and school shooting denier Alex Jones.

According to this theory, the CIA actually recruited Hicks to become some kind of oppositional force to the mainstream media. The evidence presented for this theory is as wacky as the theory itself seems to be.

First and foremost, Bill Hicks’ final comedy set before he died of pancreatic cancer featured him making jokes about how he just sold an idea for a new TV show called Let’s Hunt and Kill Billy Ray Cyrus. This is evidence, according to the conspiracy theory, that Hicks wasn’t dying because clearly he was still planning for his future.

Other evidence is how Hicks and Jones kind of look the same, and they kind of have the same teeth. Of course, Bill Hicks was nearly 15 years older than Alex Jones, and there is plenty of evidence to suggest he actually did die of pancreatic cancer back in 1994.

The big point against this theory is that Hicks and Jones do not share philosophy. Hicks was arguably fairly liberal, or at least libertarian, while Jones is extremely conservative. However, they both had distrust of the government and could both go on an angry rant, so there is some common ground there. 

4. Stephen King Killed John Lennon

Most conspiracy theories around celebrity deaths at least try to argue that the actual death itself is what you need to be suspicious of. This particular conspiracy theory wants you to question who committed a murder. In this case, the idea is that Stephen King killed John Lennon. Let that sit for a minute.

This theory is one of those wide-reaching and baffling ones that involves all kinds of inexplicable symbols and government involvement. Essentially, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan conspired together to get Stephen King, who was not yet famous, to assassinate John Lennon. They did this by implanting government codes in magazines for King to read.

In real life, Mark David Chapman killed John Lennon and after it happened he just waited for the police to come and pick him up. The conspiracy theory states that Chapman’s guilty plea is something that you shouldn’t believe, and further proof can be found in the fact that Stephen King was hit by a car in 1999, in an attempt by the government to run him over to silence him.

The originator of this conspiracy theory, a man named Steven Lightfoot, also believes that he personally is responsible for Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential win. So we might argue that, uh… this conspiracy theory isn’t based on a whole lot of logic or irrefutable evidence.

3. The Illuminati Killed Brittany Murphy

Actress Brittany Murphy died at age 32 due to pneumonia and drug interactions. Her husband died five months later of the same thing. Right away you have some very fertile ground for some conspiracy theories to start brewing. Even if none of them are true, the circumstances are still bizarre at best. 

The idea that both Murphy and her husband died of exposure to toxic mold was later floated as a possibility. Murphy’s mother first said that the mold explanation was absurd, and then changed her mind and publicly stated she believed that was the cause of death, and then filed a lawsuit against the builders of her daughter’s home.

Murphy’s father, on the other hand, believes that his daughter was deliberately poisoned with heavy metals like antimony and barium. He requested samples of her hair for independent testing but never attended any of the court hearings, so his request was dismissed.

Other theories popped up as to how and why Murphy died, including the somewhat colorful conspiracy theory that the Illuminati was behind the death. Apparently her husband had spoken on the record about how a secret Hollywood group had been trying to destroy Murphy’s career. 

Another conspiracy points out that Murphy was good friends with a TSA whistleblower who the government was trying to silence. There were many fingers being pointed in many directions, but evidence was scant at best. 

2. Morrissey Predicted Princess Diana’s Death

The life and the death of Princess Diana has fascinated many people for years, and while it’s generally accepted that Diana’s death was caused by paparazzi and a car crash, there is an unusual conspiracy theory that doesn’t seek to claim any of that didn’t happen, but rather the Irish singer Morrissey predicted it all.

According to the theory, Morrissey’s album Maladjusted debuted in the same month and year that Diana died. The first single is one called “Alma Matters.” The cover art for the album features Morrissey leaning on a car. The back cover of the album shows three men. Doesn’t make sense so far? Well, Diana was once called maladjusted in a newspaper article, and she died in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel. In a car. With three men.

The conspiracy gets even deeper when you get into the finer details. For instance, when Morrissey is leaning on the car, his right arm was tucked into his shirt just like Napoleon. And where is Napoleon from? France. The country where Diana died.

Additionally, the song “Alma Matters” is 4 minutes and 47 seconds long. Diana’s time of death was listed at 4:47 a.m.  Judge for yourself.

1. Michael Jackson Was Murdered

There is no doubt that Michael Jackson was one of the biggest musical acts of all the time. His life and career made headlines constantly. It would be unusual if his death didn’t have at least one conspiracy theory surrounding it.

As far as the rest of us know, Michael Jackson died in 2009 at age 50. A doctor had irresponsibly given him an lethal dose of a surgical anesthetic and was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for administering the drug. The conspiracy theory says this is all just a smokescreen.

According to various blogs and message board posts, Jackson was actually murdered by the Illuminati. In fact, the same shadowy organization had set up Michael Jackson in the past by falsely accusing him of child molestation. Those accusations had dogged Jackson for years prior to his death. He’d even been tried for sex abuse in the year 2004, but was acquitted on all charges.

The conspiracy theory states that, after Jackson was acquitted, the Illuminati had to switch gears and plan for his murder. And why did the Illuminati want Michael Jackson dead? It has something to do with him buying the Beatles back catalog in 1984. Apparently this gave Jackson too much power, and that meant he had to be taken out.