Did an Orca Really Kill Trainer Jessica Radcliffe? The Truth Behind the Viral Clip
This viral moment turned out to be nothing more than a whale of a tale.
After a video spread on social media depicting a whale trainer named Jessica Radcliffe being killed by an orca, it was revealed that not only does Radcliffe not exist, but the entire video was a hoax.
Instead, multiple outlets confirmed the video was generated by AI.
And while there have been real-life incidents in which animal trainers have been killed by whales—like in the case of SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau, who was pulled into a pool by orca Tilikum in 2010—there have been many more online hoaxes that caught wildfire.
Take the case of Steve Burns, for instance. After the Blue’s Clues host left the Nickelodeon children’s show in the early aughts, there were rumors that he died. But as the alive and well Steve can attest, none of them were true.
“Everyone thought I was dead for a while,” he told The New York Times last September. “I was kind of an urban legend. And that hurt, to be honest. And it kind of messed me up because that was happening while the internet was just sort of beginning to internet. No one, including myself, was kind of prepared for the degree of consensus that it represented. When a zillion, trillion people all think you’re dead for 15 years, it freaks you out.”
