We asked the BuzzFeed Community to tell us which pop culture myths, "facts," and conspiracy theories they always believed were true, but are actually false. Here are the wild results.
Warning: Some submissions include topics involving suicide.
1. Pop culture rumor: When Walt Disney died in 1966, he had his body cryogenically frozen so that one day he could be brought back to life.
What actually happened: Disney was cremated and put into an urn in a cemetery in California (along with his family). His body is not frozen underneath the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland.
2. Pop culture rumor: In The Wizard of Oz, one of the munchkins hanged himself in the background of a scene featuring Dorothy, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Man.
What actually happened: According to Time, the mysterious dark object hanging in the background is an exotic bird that producers from The Wizard of Oz "borrowed from the Los Angeles Zoo in order to create a wilderness setting."
3. Pop culture rumor: Paul McCartney died in a 1966 car crash and was replaced by a lookalike named Billy Shears. Beatles fans "confirmed" this rumor when they played the band's "White Album" backward and heard John Lennon sing, "Paul is dead" in between songs.
What actually happened: The rumor was spread in 1969 by radio DJ Russ Gibb. McCartney was never replaced by a lookalike — he's still alive and entertaining us all with his charming personality and music at age 78.
4. Pop culture rumor: Wendy Williams claimed back in 2011 that Beyoncé's baby bump was fake after she saw Queen Bey do an Australian interview.
What actually happened: Beyoncé's baby bump was real, and she even released personal footage showing her pregnancy with Blue Ivy Carter during her On the Run Tour in 2014.
5. Pop culture rumor: One Direction fans created a conspiracy theory in 2016 that Louis Tomlinson's son, Freddie Reign, didn't actually exist and Tomlinson had photoshopped a random baby into pictures to fool everyone.
What actually happened: Tomlinson's son is indeed real, and at the height of "Babygate" in 2016, BuzzFeed News acquired Freddie Reign's birth certificate.
6. Pop culture rumor: Child pageant queen JonBenét Ramsey was never murdered in her Colorado home in 1996 — she grew up to be pop singer Katy Perry.
What actually happened: This pop culture rumor was started by conspiracy theorists on YouTube. Although we still don't know who really killed Ramsey in the '90s, she unfortunately was killed — and didn't grow up to be Perry.
7. Pop culture rumor: In the mid-'80s, Richard Gere was taken to the hospital after he inserted a gerbil up his butt for sexual pleasure.
What actually happened: Gere believes that Sylvester Stallone started this rumor because he kicked him off a film they were starring in together called The Lords of Flatbush in the mid-'70s.
8. Pop culture rumor: Cass Elliot (aka Mama Cass) from the Mamas & the Papas died in 1974 by choking on a ham sandwich.
What actually happened: Elliot died from a heart attack. According to People magazine, Elliot's manager (Allan Carr) requested that her friend (journalist Sue Cameron) write that Elliot died from a ham sandwich to "save [Elliot's] reputation."
9. Pop culture rumor: Lindsay Lohan had a twin sister named Kelsey who starred in The Parent Trap with her, and before the movie was released in 1998, Lohan killed her.
What actually happened: Lohan never had a twin sister. In her first movie role, she flawlessly played identical twin characters and nailed it. Technology, baby — and a body double.
10. Pop culture rumor: Yoko Ono was the one who killed her husband, John Lennon, in December 1980. Beatles fans "claimed" that if you played the Ono song "Kiss Kiss Kiss" backward, you could hear multiple "confessions" from Ono, one of them being, "I shot John Lennon."
What actually happened: Lennon was shot by Mark David Chapman outside his apartment building in New York City after a recording session. The pop culture rumor that Ono killed her husband has been spurred on for decades by die-hard Lennon/Beatles fans.
11. And the final pop culture rumor: Mister Rogers was a sniper in the Vietnam War and developed extreme anger issues. His therapist suggested that the best way to diminish his aggression was to get involved in children's entertainment.
What actually happened: Mister (Fred) Rogers was never a member of the military; nor did he fight in the Vietnam War. He attended Rollins College in 1951 to study music composition, landed a job at a TV station in 1953, and eventually started Mister Rogers' Neighborhood in the late '60s.
