Family Guy: How A 'Lois Griffin Is Dead' Hoax Shook The Internet

"Family Guy" made headlines when it briefly killed off Brian in 2013, only to bring him back a couple of episodes later. As such, it shouldn't come as a surprise that people were genuinely worried about the family matriarch when a "Lois Griffin is dead" hoax emerged online.

The hoax's originator is Twitter user @minasdemon, who posted on Christmas Day 2022, "Lois Griffin DEAD AT 43." They followed this up with a clip from the show of Stewie shooting Lois repeatedly, and the post garnered over 20 million views with ample engagement. Plenty of people responded with their own memes of the event, clearly seeing it as a ruse, but others didn't see through the charade. Many social media users appeared genuinely distressed over the news, and some even thought the post implied that Lois' voice actor, Alex Borstein, passed away. Thankfully, that wasn't the case, with Borstein alive and well, and she has no plans on leaving the animated sitcom any time soon. 

However, memes have a tendency to take on lives of their own, and it would seem the Twitter post inspired a pretty awful TikTok trend.

It's incredible how a single tweet or meme can come to overtake the internet. On the same day as the original "Lois Griffin is Dead" tweet, TikTok user @arabellaalexis0 made a video where she tells her family that Lois Griffin has died. The actual funny part is that it seems like they don't know who Lois Griffin is initially, but after a quick Google search, they get wise to what's going on. 

That video may not have gotten a ton of engagement, but it could be argued it kicked off a disturbing trend on the platform. It was around this time the "Celebrity Death Prank" challenge popped up on TikTok. Memes are such a nebulous concept that it can be tough to draw direct correlations, but essentially, this meme involves younger users telling their parents or other family members that their favorite celebrity has passed away and recording their reactions. It's not exactly TikTok's finest moment, as that's a pretty mean stunt to pull on someone. Arguably the worst example of this trend is when Angela Bassett's son, Slater, made a TikTok where he tells her that her "Black Panther" co-star Michael B. Jordan had died. Considering Bassett literally experienced that with the tragic passing of Chadwick Boseman, it's understandable he took the video down and had to make a public apology. 

Like many internet trends, the "Celebrity Death Prank" challenge fizzled out shortly after it began, and it just goes to show how simple joke posts can grow into something ugly.