Background

If you’ve used the internet within the last few years, you may have heard of the viral urban legend regarding the death of Walt Disney. A number of rumors have circulated, including but not limited to: his dead body was placed in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” exhibit as decoration, Disney has plans to bring his frozen body (or just head, depending on who you ask) back to life, and that the hit movie “Frozen” was created simply to cover up that he was cryogenically frozen.

Mark Bland of Fox News Radio said in a tweet, “Disney made “Frozen” so that when you Google “Disney frozen” you would get search results about the movie and not about Walt Disney supposedly being cryogenically frozen.”

The conspiracy theories have been ongoing starting even before 1995, but as recently as fall 2021, the chatter increased. People online were beginning to spread the idea that Disney had plans to thaw his frozen body in December of that same year.

Head to Original Source

Reporter Bonine of Daily News Reported, a satirical newspaper, wrote, “Walt Disney was frozen in a cryogenic tank shortly after he died in the hopes that science would one day be able to reanimate his frozen body after a cure for his ailments were found.”

Whether people are continuing to spread this misinformation as satirical or as truth remains unclear, and there is not just one “original” source of the many conspiracy theories surrounding the death of Walt Disney.

Try a Keyword Search

Although it is fairly quick and easy to discover that Walt Disney was not actually frozen (according to his death certificate, he was cremated), keywords can still aid you in your search. It is important to make sure the sites are at least in part credible, and that the article is not satirical or a parody.

Anything involving the words “frozen” or “thawed” can probably be disregarded, and viral internet posts are definitely not the source that anyone should take as complete truth.

However, if you do search with the words “frozen” or “thawed”, most of the results will probably either be parody or fact-checking websites, such as this USA Today article. The way that this rumor is spread is definitely mostly via social media such as Twitter or TikTok, and not by any sort of reliable source.

What’s the Evidence?

Spotting reliable sources can be difficult, especially if you are not familiar with many online newspapers or reputable websites. There are quick ways to identify an indication of reliability, such as looking at the web domain (.com is more likely to be less reliable than, say, .gov or .org) but it is not always a perfect solution. Many reliable sources have a .com web domain, so it’s often better to widen your search for legitimacy.

Bylines. Looking for an author’s name can be good, because if there is one, that means the author was willing to attach their name to that work. That article is now much more likely to be legitimate.

Dates & times. Another good indication is the reporting of dates and times, so that you can assure that the information is as recent as possible

Hyperlinks. References to other sources and information is an indication of reliability, so that if needed, you can trace information back to where it initially came from.

Original reporting. In relation to the last point, heading to the original source of the information can be better than reading it second-hand. That being said, this is hard to apply to the Walk Disney situation at hand, because the rumors have been ongoing for quite a well and no one main source can be identified. However, if a reporter were to, say, interview someone at Disney and get specific confirmation that Walt Disney is not going to be brought back to life, that would be a great original report.

Rating

As stated, most of the chatter around Walt Disney being cryogenically frozen is satire. Even if it is fake, it is not intended to harm. The content is meant to be taken as a joke to comment on the perceived “evilness” of a large corporation like Disney.