The theory that Elvis Presley is still alive has been around so long that it has become something of a pop culture joke, with the 1994 Ray Stevens song “I saw Elvis in a UFO” playfully skewering some of the oddball theories that the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll’s death subsequently produced.

Of the fans who refuse to believe that the King died in the bathroom of his Graceland home in August 1977, there are those that believe the singer and noted UFO enthusiast was finally abducted by aliens — who had apparently appeared to him throughout his life, and perhaps had even helped him throughout his career — while a marginally more plausible but nonetheless bizarre theory argues that the King was in fact working for the FBI, and that he had effectively entered a witness protection program before evidence that he was an agent was made public (via the Internet Public Library). However, Time reports that there is no mention of Presley’s being involved in the FBI in the 760 files the agency released concerning the late singer.

Much of the speculation has been fueled by the unavailability of the results of Presley’s autopsy, which his father, Vernon, had sealed to prevent their contents falling into the public domain. According to Newsweek, they are finally due to be published in 2027, on the 50th anniversary of Presley’s death.

Apple Inc. founder and CEO Steve Jobs became the closest thing tech had to a rock star following the dawn of a triple threat of products, the iPod, iPhone, and iPad, between 2001 and 2010. Sadly, Jobs died from neuroendocrine cancer on October 5, 2011, just 18 months after the iPad’s initial release. By then, of course, the innovations he oversaw had already changed the landscape of home technology forever.

And just like that of a rock star, the death of Steve Jobs was so unbelievable for many of his fans — though he had been ill for several years, he always seemed in good health in public appearances — that it seems a sense of denialism about the loss of the former Apple CEO is still pervasive a decade later. In 2019 for example, the internet lost its collective mind when an image was posted that claimed to show Jobs alive and well and living in Cairo, Egypt (per Cnet). Al Bawaba notes that Jobs was of Syrian descent, and refers to a Reddit post claiming that Jobs had a love of the Middle East and likely decided to fake his death and move there to enjoy a quieter life.

Jobs has supposedly been spotted numerous times, including in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, according to The India Times.

Born into a devout Baptist family in Valdosta, Georgia, Bill Hicks drew on the firebrand performances of the preachers he encountered in his youth to create his own brand of cutting edge, rage-fueled comedy, becoming known as one of the angriest young comics of his generation before his tragic early death in 1994, aged just 32 (per The Independent). But some conspiracy theorists have argued that the Bill Hicks story doesn’t end there, and in fact the comedian has continued to ply his trade as a loudmouth social critic in a far less comedic (and, in must be said, coherent) form: that of far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

According to Texas Monthly, the incredible (in both senses of the word) theory first emerged in 2014, when a 33-minute-long video was posted to YouTube which claimed that Hicks had undergone the transformation after being recruited into the CIA to become “controlled opposition” against the mainstream media. Yes, in this version of events, the mainstream media controls the alternative media too.

Per the same source, critics of the unproven theory have argued not only that the two figures exist on wildly different sides of the political spectrum, but it is also true that being loud, white, male, and rotund isn’t a particularly niche profile among American public figures.

Though of course, the death of a star as big as David Bowie had to attract its own bizarre conspiracy theories, including the classic one: that the Thin White Duke was still alive and kicking on planet Earth, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Bowie had avoided the limelight for more than a decade the time of his death; although he had released two well-received albums and several singles since his 2013 comeback starting with the impossibly delicate surprise release “Where Are We Now?” which included a number of music videos, the star avoided all press, public appearances, and performances, according to Tip Berlin. But the impeccably choreographed release of both Bowie’s comeback album “The Next Day” and that of “Blackstar” seemed to suggest that the musician who back in the 1960s had timed the release of his single “Space Oddity” to coincide with the Apollo moon landing was still a master of manipulating the media … and that his supposed death was just the Starman’s latest trick, per the Thai Law Forum.

Conspiracists pointed to the similarities between Bowie and his former colleague and fellow Brit Jack Steven, a music mogul who was interviewed shortly after Bowie’s death on the BBC (via YouTube). While there are certainly some physical resemblances, many commentators pointed to something that Steven said at the start of his interview, namely, that he “felt that part of [him] had died,” which some have taken as evidence that Bowie and Steven are the same person, and his appearance on live TV was a coded farewell to his eagle-eyed fans who knew the truth.

In 2010, the actor Randy Quaid and his wife, Evi, moved to Canada amid a storm of controversy and a string of eccentric interviews in which the pair claimed they were on the run from a murderous, shadowy organization that they dubbed the “Hollywood Star Whackers,” according to Vanity Fair. The pair had previously attempted to escape them by driving to Siberia, and by living variously in their car and in hotels (from which on one occasion they skipped out a $10,000 bill), in a frenzied attempt to evade the clutches of the “Whackers” they say were after them.

The Quaids have repeatedly claimed that the “Whackers” are responsible for some of the most high profile deaths in the entertainment industry, including those of Heath Ledger and David Carradine, and for ruining the careers of many others. By 2020, the couple were still adamant that their suspicions were correct, despite the fact that they were both alive and well and the only damage that had been done to their livelihoods had come about thanks to, well, their bizarre interviews.

“I can’t believe that David would commit suicide. His wife recently has come out and said she doesn’t believe that … that she believes he was murdered. Heath was an athlete. He played Australian football. He was robust. I’ve had eight friends of mine who have either died mysteriously or had scandals surrounding them in recent years,” claimed Randy (via Entertainment Weekly).