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A Fake Story About Rumble The Bison’s Death Gained Traction Online. It’s Part Of A National Disinformation Scam. 

Thousands of Facebook users were told that their teams’ mascot performer had been killed in an accident. But Rumble's not dead, says the OKC Thunder.

8:43 AM CST on January 30, 2026

At least 66 Facebook accounts posted the disinformation between January 15 and January 20, and the posts were shared over 7,000 times.

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Fake stories of sports mascot deaths are making the rounds—and pointing to a pattern of fake news scams targeting sports fans across the country. 

When I heard through word-of-mouth that a performer behind the OKC Thunder’s Rumble the Bison had died, I had to go sniffing for the proof. That search led me to a Facebook post. 

The post, which has since been deleted,1 read, “The Oklahoma City Thunder community is deeply saddened by the sudden passing of the student who portrayed the Rumble the Bison mascot following an accident. Fans and the organization are coming together to remember and honor the dedicated performer who brought energy and joy to the team and Thunder games.” 

It was published on January 17 by a Facebook page called “Shai & the Storm,” purportedly an OKC Thunder fan page that “celebrates the rise of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and the electrifying energy of the Oklahoma City Thunder.” 

The original "Shai & the Storm" post, now deleted, which claimed that the performer behind Rumble had died.

The thing is, it’s fake. Landis Tindell, a spokesperson and manager of corporate communications for the Oklahoma City Thunder, confirmed by phone on Monday that no performer who plays Rumble the Bison in any capacity for the Thunder has died in the last month. 

Each post by “Shai & the Storm” follows a similar pattern. First, a divisive, surprising, or otherwise dubious news item such as Karoline Leavitt mocked Shai Gilgeous-Alexander or Shai Gilgeous-Alexander dropped a bombshell about Trump’s 1970 Wharton IQ test or Shai Gilgeous-Alexander revealed a chilling detail about Alex Pretti’s final act is detailed in an image and caption. 

These posts are followed up with a call to read the “FULL DETAILS,” linking to a webpage repeating the same copy in the Facebook post—only this page is full of Google Ads. One inspection of the website containing the fabricated story about Rumble the Bison—which still exists, despite the Facebook post having disappeared—revealed at least 25 ads on the page, and a reading of the page’s source code through urlscan.io revealed 37 instances of “adsbygoogle,” a piece of Javascript code that helps Google ads display to a user.