Unfounded claims that plane crashes were human sacrifices for the Super Bowl spread online

Drawing connections between numbers, symbols and snakes, some social media posts claim without evidence that recent plane crashes in the United States were human sacrifices for the Feb. 9 Super Bowl between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles.

“On January 26, 2020, Kobe Bryant’s helicopter crashed, and then we were hit with a global ‘pandemic,’” a Jan. 31 Instagram post said, referring to the fatal crash that killed Basketball Hall of Famer Kobe Bryant. “Then, five years and three days later, on January 29, 2025, there was a crash in Washington D.C., during the Lunar New Year. Now, on January 31, a helicopter crashed in Philadelphia. … They must be doing blood sacrifices for the Super Bowl 2/9/2025.”

Yet another post draws connections between the Year of the Snake, which started on the Lunar New Year that began Jan. 29, and Black Mamba, a nickname Bryant gave himself, to argue that the American Airlines flight that collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter Jan. 29 in Washington, D.C., and a Learjet air ambulance that crashed Jan. 31 in Philadelphia were not accidents but “intentional.”

“The TRUTH about these plane crashes,” the Feb. 1 Instagram post said. “Human sacrif*ce rituals.”

These posts were flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)

The Washington and Philadelphia crashes are under investigation. But as we concluded with claims Bryant’s crash was planned, or that he was murdered, these posts are speculative and baseless.

And some of the posts include verifiable falsehoods, such as that no one was in the Black Hawk when it collided with the American Airlines jet. U.S. Army Capt. Rebecca Lobach, Chief Warrant Officer Andrew Eaves and Staff Sgt. Ryan O’Hara died in the crash, the Army said.

We rate claims these crashes were human sacrifice rituals for the Super Bowl Pants on Fire!