Jimmy Fallon Responds to Twitter Death Hoax on ‘Tonight Show’

Jimmy Fallon addressed being at the center of a seemingly still-in-progress death hoax on Twitter during the latest episode of The Tonight Show.

On Wednesday’s show, Fallon addressed the #RIPJimmyFallon trending topic in his monologue as well as in a separate desk segment. For the former, Fallon opened the show by noting that he was indeed alive, a distinction he celebrated with a quick musical number.

“I don’t know if you guys saw this but for the last 24 hours #RIPJimmyFallon has been trending on Twitter,” Fallon said in his monologue on Wednesday night, as seen below. “Yep. Even worse, when they heard I died, Ticketmaster kicked me out of line for Taylor Swift tickets.”

Later on in Wednesday’s show, as seen in the video at the top of this page, Fallon went into more detail. As the host explained, this actually isn’t the first time he’s been placed at the center of such claims.

“Interesting night last night for me, yeah, to be trending that you died on Twitter,” Fallon said. “It happened to me once before. I died about ten years ago on Twitter so it wasn’t as traumatic the second time. But I was out to dinner with my wife, we were at a restaurant and my phone was just going off and I was like, ‘I’m sorry. I gotta take this.’ She goes, ‘What?’ I go, ‘I’m trending on Twitter.’ She goes, ‘Oh cool.’ I go, ‘Well, no. Not. I’m dead. Yeah, I died.’ She’s like, ‘Oh, man. That’s terrible. I loved you.’”

Fallon noted he wasn’t entirely clear on how the hoax initially started to spread this time around, although he joked that “people cared” more when it happened a decade ago.

“This time, everyone was like, ‘You’re good, right?’” Fallon said. “I didn’t hear anything from Timberlake. Nothing. Timberlake, nothing. I expect flowers tomorrow.”

From there, Fallon took a brief detour into a genuine expression of existential peace before flipping his remarks into a plug for upcoming Tonight Show musical guests The Smile.

“First of all, I’m not going to die,” Fallon said. “I’m very healthy and I have a lot to live for. I have two little girls and I’ll live for a long time so you don’t have to worry about me. I’m good. But when eventually I do die, I won’t be checking social media.” 

Instead, Fallon said, he will try to send another kind of message.

“Maybe I’ll try, I’ll try to send a message,” he said. “If I do, I’ll try to send a message. I’ll say, if you see ‘smile’ somewhere, it’s me. … No, the band.”

See more above.