Gallery: 13 Celebrities Who Have Been Falsely Declared Dead

A fake, very poorly written press release circulated in 2006, claiming that the newest member of The Office had died in a paragliding accident. No one believed it for long, not least because it was an obvious allusion to his Wedding Crashers character and therefore very unrealistic.

In 2007, a Florida-based reference site listed Sinbad as dead; soon, reports surfaced that the comedian had suffered a heart attack. An AP reporter quickly cleared it up, and for his part, Sinbad was pretty goodhumored about the whole thing: "It's gonna be more commonplace as the Internet opens up more and more. It's not that strange."

In the summer of 2009, when we actually lost icons like Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett, the site fakeawish.com encouraged a few death hoaxes as well. Some user inserted Natalie Portman's name into the site's Mad-Libs-style search engine, and voila! the actress plummeted to her death off a cliff while filming in New Zealand. But as we all know, Portman is doing very well.

The weirdest part is, there doesn't seem to have ever been a halfway-legitimate news report on the supposed death of the ShamWow and Slap Chop spokesman. But when I Googled "shamwow vince dead", I came up with tons of sites where people asked just that. So, he's proof that all it takes is a rumor.

Rumor had it that a plane crash had spelled the end for the perpetual Sexiest Man Alive in 2009. What's really sad is that Clooney's actual friends called him, shaken, asking if he were OK.

The kid behind one of my favorite early Internet videos "Aicha" (check it out here) was long believed to have killed himself in an extended version of the video. However, it was all a rumor and only the amazingness I linked to above exists.

In December 2010, it was reported that Wilson died instantly in a snowboarding accident, in which he slammed into a tree in Zermatt, Switzerland. (Looks like the Jaden Smith people stole every detail for their story.) As ridiculous as the story seemed, there was perhaps a grain of truth to it, considering that Wilson had slit his wrists in 2007 after battling depression.

As death rumors go, Britney's got to be some sort of cat with nine lives: Reports of her death crop up every few years, and get more believable with her increasingly erratic behavior. That said, the most interesting one came when she was still a squeaky-clean teen: She and then-beau Justin Timberlake were allegedly in a car accident that decapitated Britney, so a body double was brought in.

In December 2010 (same time as the Owen Wilson hoax), a Twitter user named @originalcjizzle (who had 1,500 followers) tweeted, RT @CNN: Breaking News: actor Morgan Freeman has passed away in his Burbank home<< wow legendary actor #RIPmorganfreeman. A shrewd move, as it had news sources believing that he was simply carrying along CNN's news. Another Twitter user, Peter Shankman, quickly debunked the rumor: Morgan Freeman is still busy living. He's yet to get busy dying."

No surprise, an MTV-lookalike news site reported that Knoxville had bit the dust while shooting crazy stunts for Jackass in 2002. At least they went for details: He allegedly had a parachute failure while jumping out of a biplane and eating baked beans.

Of course there have been rumors of the world's teenage population being deprived of the Biebs, but I have to admit that the people behind the hoax did their research: Just this past January, #RIPJustinBieber was a trending topic on Twitter, and one site came up with this "news": Justin Bieber has died following a gunshot wound sustained during a late night altercation in west Manhattan. Oh, Internet.

This urban legend exploded before the Internet was even a twinkle in a programmer's eye. First came a rumor that the Beatle had died in a car crash and been replaced with a lookalike. Then listeners began to find "clues" in songs played backwards, like "Turn me on, dead man" and "I buried Paul." Even the Abbey Road cover above came under fire, with conspiracy theorists claiming that Paul, dressed in a shabby suit and barefoot, was meant to represent a corpse. However, a 1969 LIFE cover story has McCartney rebutting the rumors and adding, "I would rather be a little less famous these days."