The Department of Truth #0 kicked off a new era for James Tynion IV and Martin Simmonds’ conspiracy theory epic from Image Comics, and also began a new supplemental story about Elvis Presley, “Suspicious Minds,” by Scott Snyder and Joshua Hixson. The hip-swiveling superstar is sure to get weird here, but in the real world, Presley’s death led to many of its own suspicions and urban legends. Conspiracy theory expert Stephanie Kemmerer explains.
Beyond his lasting fame and influence, Elvis Presley, the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, is probably the most popular and recognized person within the realm of what the pseudonymous researcher QuacksAnonymous has termed “Exit Lore.” Make no mistake: Elvis is dead. He’s been dead for a long time. There are documentaries specifically about his death. People who knew him intimately have said that he’s dead. But still, for decades after his ignominious end in 1977, plenty of folks believed that the King somehow faked his death and went into hiding.
Exit Lore can be separated into two different categories. The first is made up of real people who faked their deaths and then “came back” as either public figures or private citizens for some kind of financial or social gain, and real people who “died” and were replaced by body doubles or “clones.” The darker end of the spectrum posits that fake people are created and then presented as having died in order to further a political goal.
Image Comics
The Exit Lore around Elvis is usually that of the celebrity who faked their death and came back as an ordinary, everyday person. It was a surprisingly popular idea in the ’80s and ’90s, and it’s immortalized in the opening sequence of the cult classic TV show Eerie, Indiana , where Elvis is seen living in a small, suburban town.
Then there are those who are believed to have been reintroduced as new famous people. Some people think that the supposedly murdered 6-year-old JonBenét Ramsey actually grew up to be pop star Katy Perry. Also in this category would be the belief that comedian Bill Hicks faked his death and came back as conspiracy-monger Alex Jones (a concept Hicks would no doubt find disgusting).
For decades, the most popular story of someone who died and was replaced with a body double surrounded the Beatles singer and bassist Paul McCartney, whose adherents claimed was killed in a car crash in 1966. Fans combed through albums and interviews looking for “clues,” claiming that the rest of the band had covered up McCartney’s death but felt guilt over their ruse, so they admitted the truth surreptitiously. In more recent years, McCartney’s been replaced (no pun intended) by Avril Lavigne, and the story goes that she took her own life, only to be replaced by a lookalike in order to maintain the financial gains. Lavigne herself was stunned to have heard about this.
Stories of fake people and their fake deaths are where the idea of “crisis actors” and “staged events” comes in. Crisis actors are a real thing — people who pretend to be victims or perpetrators for various law enforcement and medical training exercises. They’re able to present as injured or hurt civilians in order to make the training more realistic. Conspiracy theorists, though, believe these actors are also hired for actual mass casualty events to convince the public that a tragedy has occurred when it really hasn’t.
Examples: 1. JonBenét Ramsey, 2. Elvis Presley, 3. Paul McCartney, 4. Crisis actors
There are some who believe that all of the people aboard the four planes hijacked by terrorists on 9/11 never existed, or that their deaths were faked. There are even very unwell people who believe they were all AI digital creations (somehow made by 2001 technology) with fake photos, fake backstories, and fake obituaries, all done to further a political goal of one kind or another. (The “researcher” who first presented this concept cruelly called the 9/11 victims “VicSims.”)
But the most famous example of this is the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Rumors of mass shootings being faked or staged had been swirling prior to that event, but it really took off afterward, thanks to the heinous rhetoric of Alex Jones. Not long before Sandy Hook was the shooting in Aurora, Colorado, and not long after was the Boston Marathon bombing. Those events, too, became part of the “everything is faked to fool you” Exit Lore.
While Elvis Exit Lore stories seem relatively harmless or fun, it’s important to note that these beliefs are like potato chips; you can never stop at just one. A person who thinks Elvis faked his death may be more likely to believe in tragedy crisis actors as well, and many believers take that into the real world and cause real harm.
“Suspicious Minds” continues in The Department of Truth #34, out today.
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