14 Images That Went Viral Online But Are Totally Bogus

From iconic to controversial, these popular photos are big fat liars.

Published 1 year ago in Wow

The internet has no shortage of amazing photos, pictures and stories. However, like every other aspect of life there are people who can't help but try and pull the wool over our eyes with a fake image, photoshopped pic, or just plain old false information.

From iconic to controversial, these popular photos are big fat liars.

1
This JFK Assassination Photo: First off, use a little skepticism. Who would have taken the photo?? Did you ever see anyone in the Zapruder film that close to the car? No. This is a still image from the 1977 made-for-TV movie 'The Trial Of Lee Harvey Oswald'.

2
Mt. Fuji: This is not a photo of clouds stacked on top of Mt. Fuji -- mostly. The cloud on the bottom is legit. It's called a lenticular cloud and is one of the coolest weather phenomena on Earth. Someone had to copy/paste it in Photoshop and make this image. This stack never happened.

3
Perfect Body: Is she pretty? Heck yeah. Was she a Time Magazine image of perfection in 1955? Nope. In 1955, a photo of a woman in a bikini published in Time would have been the moral scandal to end all scandals. People would have rioted over a trusted publication publishing pornography. Which is funny, because that's actually a black & white version of a 2004 photo of Aria Giovanni -- a porn star.
4
Chemtrails Plane: The airplane trails are water vapor streaks called contrails. This photo that is often the conspiracy-theorists mic drop is an airliner undergoing ballast testing. The barrels half-filled with water and act as a substitute for human passengers.

5
Doubleplus Untruth: The ultimate irony? The placement of a CCTV camera outside '1984' author George Orwell's house. It might be if that was actually a camera in front of Orwell's house. Artist Steve Ullathorne created a series where he photoshopped spectacularly juxtaposed images. Also, the point of '1984' was manipulation of language as propaganda -- not government surveillance.
6
Sarah Palin's 'Murica: Sarah Palin is as American as apple pie and cheating on your taxes, right? Depends on who you ask, but she never posed for this photo. Someone took a photo of a regular girl with a bikini and rifle, and photoshopped Palin's head on there, poorly.
7
Syrian Child: You've seen this billed as the child in Syria sleeping between the graves of his parents. As heart-wrenching as that might be, it's not that. The photo is actually part of an art project by Saudi photographer Abdul Aziz al-Otaibi. His project explored the eternal love a child has for their parents, and this was set up for the series. The kid is fine, his parents are intact, and none of this had anything to do with Syria.

8
McRacist: Despite this being absolutely and utterly absurd, people still believe it five years later. Was McDonald's really charging based on race? Come on now, of course not. The sign is faker than fake and was obviously created by some racist person somewhere. How do you know they were racist? Call the 1-800 number. Go ahead, we'll wait.
9
High Times: Marlboro is so cool that they're ready for marijuana to be legalized, with their brand new product. Could this be real? Absolutely not. This is a manipulated photo from a fake news site that wrote a not-very-good story about it. Sorry, weed enthusiasts still have to roll their own.
10
Eclipse From Space: You were likely told this was a total eclipse as viewed from the International Space Station. You were also lied to. That's not how eclipses work at all, and this was created by a DeviantART user for no other reason than it looks cool.

11
Robbin' The Hood: This showed up right after Ferguson became a thing, and was a great way to find out which one of your Facebook friends were closet racists. It was posted to Reddit by user Bdawgid and the internet went with it. The actual version in the Riverfront Times and shows a sign that finishes with "..leaves the house." The "robs a store" was photoshopped in there... poorly.
12
Nuclear Tide: The 2011 earthquake in Japan caused a lot of issues at Fukushima Nuclear Plant. A lot of people claim this photo shows National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) tracking radiation making its way across the ocean. Fortunately, that's not what this is. It's an experiment tracking wave height, not radiation. The giveaway is in the legend on the right, showing the measurements in cm -- a unit of height. Radiation is measured in becquerels (Bq).
13
9/11 Martyr: You saw this photo, and the store's address, and were likely told something about Islam and 9/11. Is the photo real? Yes. Was Perfume Planet closed on September 11, 2009 for Imam Ali's martyrdom? Yes. However, Imam Ali was martyred in the 7th century -- well before 9/11. It's a regular Muslim holiday that happens every year. Because of a quirk of the calendar, it just happened to fall on 9/11 that year. The store owner didn't do it on purpose but was still inundated with death threats for his troubles.

14
Run For The Border: After Arizona passed their get-tough-on-immigration law and Los Angeles city lawmakers commented they felt it was wrong -- this showed up. It got passed around as being a legit photo of a billboard, as non-stupid people replied "You have got to be kidding me!" Not only is this fake, but it's the worst example of Photoshop in history. In fact, it's a great chance that's actually MS Paint.
15
Long Exposure Lightning Tree: As much as we'd all love this to be real... sorry. Artist Darren Pearson created it using a number of special tricks. This is not how lightning works at all, and was done simply as a work of art. Pearson, going by the name Darius Twin, has a whole series of "light paintings" just like this -- and they're all pretty cool.