No proof Tom Holland died, despite viral internet rumor

An Instagram account posted multiple times in a day to baselessly claim that "Spider-Man" star Tom Holland died, sparking a flurry of similar posts across social media platforms. 

But there’s no evidence that the 26-year-old English actor is actually dead; the viral rumor is unsubstantiated and appears to be a hoax.

PolitiFact searched Google and the Nexis news database, and found no credible news reports to corroborate the Instagram rumor. 

We also reviewed the Instagram and Twitter accounts belonging to Holland; his girlfriend, actress Zendaya; his three brothers; and several of his co-stars on "The Crowded Room," an upcoming Apple TV+ series that has yet to be released. We found no posts indicating that Holland had died as of July 14. (We reached out to Holland and agencies listed in Holland’s biography on the website IMDb, but we did not hear back.)

Holland was spotted filming for the TV show July 6 in New York City.

The unsubstantiated rumor claiming Holland died was spread by an Instagram account with 186,000 followers, which repeated the rumor in numerous separate posts July 12. 

"THE TRUTH REVEALED: Spiderman’s Tom Hollard (sic) confirmed to have died by tripping + falling into a well and freezing to death," the account wrote in one such post, which received more than 20,000 likes. The post was designed to look like a screen grab of a tweet from an account called "The Reportygraph" — an account that we did not find on Twitter.

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Facebook posts

stated on March 18, 2019 in a Facebook post

Says the Looney Tunes cartoon character Yosemite Sam was banned from television for being too violent.

Another post layered text that read, "Tom Holland, 1996-2022," over a photo that Holland recently posted on his own Instagram page. 

The posts were flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)The Instagram account also shared memes mourning Holland’s supposed death, while other posts from the same day included references to media coverage of the hoax. In one post, the account shared a screen grab of Google search results showing headlines debunking the rumor.

A day later, the account shared a close-up video of what appears to be a horse’s face. The caption read: "Please redirect all media outlets covering this page to this post as our official statement regarding the Tom Holland post. Squishy honse (sic)."

We rate the Instagram post’s claim that Holland died False.