Wayne Knight in a scene from Seinfeld.
Rumours of Seinfeld star Wayne Knight's death were not only greatly exaggerated, they were completely fabricated.
As it turns out, the portly actor, best known for playing Jerry's obsequious neighbor Newman on Seinfeld, was a victim of yet another celebrity death hoax.
Welcome to the new abnormal.
On Sunday, tweets were issued from several fake websites, including TMZ Today and a fake Us Weekly, claiming that the 58-year-old Knight had been involved in a horrific car accident with a semi-trailer truck that had claimed his life.
And since the details make the hoax, the false reports specified that Knight died of blunt force trauma in the accident that supposedly occurred along Route 446 near the Pennsylvania-New York state border.
Fittingly, Knight went on Twitter himself to inform his followers that he was alive and well by tweeting, "Some of you will be glad to hear this, others strangely disappointed, but … I am alive and well."
In a subsequent tweet, Knight added: "Does someone have to DIE to trend? Geez! Thanks for all the love everybody. I didn't know you cared. Glad to be breathing!"
The supposed death and miraculous resurrection of Knight comes barely a week after the same death-hoax treatment was directed towards the Pawn Stars fixture known as Chumlee.
Early last week, the tabloid site eBuzzd reported that reality-TV star Chumlee (real name Austin Russell) had died suddenly of a heart attack.
Keep in mind that the same site also had a report on the passing of Betty White (not true) and that Justin Bieber had been involved in a tragic car accident (not true).
In Chumlee's case, the death report was made even more distasteful by the inclusion of a quote from a "doctor" who claimed that his death was due to rapid weight loss.
All of which was obviously incorrect, and corrected by Chumlee himself on his Twitter account with the cryptic tweet, "May we live long, Rich forever."