People apparently spent Christmas break pranking their families by telling them popular celebs and political figures died

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A new viral TikTok trend involves people pranking their family members by falsely claiming that celebrities have suddenly died.

One of the top videos, with over eight million views, features a Texas-based vinyl record influencer telling her mother that Ozzy Osbourne died. She builds up to the news slowly as her mother grows increasingly panicked, and then when she says “Ozzy,” her parent starts howling.

“I think my mom never wants me back for Christmas dinner,” the caption says.

Many of the videos follow a similar format, in which the camera holder gasps and then pronounces a celebrity dead, garnering the attention of everyone in the room. In one video, a woman falsely told her family that Justin Bieber died of a drug overdose at age 28, leading the shocked person next to her to say that her life was over.

The morbid hashtag “celebritydeathprank” has racked up over 100 million views and the trend has gone so viral that people have started to make compilation videos of family members being fooled. 

Seemingly no one was immune from being used as prank fodder, even celebrities who were already dead. In one video, a man appeared to tell his grandmother that Beatles guitarist John Lennon, who was assassinated in 1980, had just died. When she heard the news, she was astonished.

“Grandma, John Lennon’s been dead for fucking years, decades already, come on,” he said jokingly.

“Well, I didn’t know,” she said in reply.

Multiple TikTok creators have also made videos where they tell their parents that former President Donald Trump died, and received mixed reactions. In one video, a mother dropped a container when she heard the news and looked stunned with sadness. In another, the prank recipient clapped their hands together and yelled, “thank you Jesus, Merry Christmas!”

One creator made a video pranking her mother by saying her favorite celebrity — the South Korean musician PSY — had died while she was using an exercise machine. The mother looked startled and continued to use the machine slowly.