Photos published in early September 2026 authentically show former NFL linebacker Clay Matthews after extensive plastic surgery.
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Context
It is unclear whether TMZ’s photos of Matthews with an enlarged chin and jawline and bulging muscles are authentic, meaning not generated or edited using artificial intelligence software. However, Matthews later told the outlet his look in the pictures was a result of prosthetics for an ad campaign, not plastic surgery.
In early September 2026, alleged photos circulated online purportedly showing former NFL linebacker Clay Matthews after extensive plastic surgery.
One X user who shared the images, which showed Matthews with an enlarged chin and jawline, bulging arm and leg muscles and loading bags into a car, wrote (archived): “TRENDING: Packers legend Clay Matthews was spotted out grabbing groceries, looking VERY different after getting some work done. An absolutely shocking transformation.”
It is unclear whether TMZ’s images of Matthews are authentic, meaning not generated or edited using artificial intelligence software. Pangram, a highlyregarded artificial intelligence detector, determined that severalimages from TMZ’s gallery were “fully AI.” Such tools are fallible though and should not be entirely relied upon for answers to media’s authenticity.
Regardless, TMZ’s images do not show Matthews after plastic surgery. Therefore, we rate this claim false.
The outlet reported on Sept. 9, 2026 (archived), that Matthews had prosthetics fitted for an ad campaign for a sports betting platform that created the look seen in TMZ’s pictures. That sports betting platform sponsored that TMZ article. It was not possible to independently confirm whether the outlet’s images of Matthews were staged as part of the platform’s advertising campaign. Snopes contacted TMZ to ask about the authenticity of its images and await a reply.
The TMZ article features a video of Matthews saying it took four hours to fit the prosthetics, which another video (archived) posted to the former Green Bay Packers linebacker’s Facebook page shows also included his calves. The sports betting platform Matthews advertised for when he wore the prosthetics also posted a video on X (archived) that shows them being fitted to the former NFL star’s face.
Given that Matthews did wear the prosthetics in question, it is likely that TMZ’s images of him are authentic.
The prosthetics’ cartoonishly enlarged jawline and muscles played on the “looksmaxxing” trend that the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines as “efforts, sometimes extreme, young men take to look more attractive.”
For further reading, Snopes has previously investigated a number of other rumors about the NFL.
Pandell, Lexi. ‘Pangram Has Emerged as the Gold Standard of AI Detection. Should You Trust It?’ Wired, 2 Sept. 2026. www.wired.com, https://www.wired.com/story/pangram-has-emerged-as-the-gold-standard-of-ai-detection/.
Pohl, Makenzie. ‘Pangram Review: Is It the Best AI Detector in 2026?’ Siege Media, 3 Sept. 2026, https://www.siegemedia.com/creation/pangram-review.
Staff, T. M. Z. ‘Clay Matthews Shows Off Dramatic Transformation in New Photos’. TMZ, 8 Sept. 2026, https://www.tmz.com/2026/09/08/clay-matthews-dramatic-new-look-transformation/.
T. M. Z. Staff. ‘Clay Matthews Reveals the Truth Behind His Looksmaxxing Transformation’. TMZ, 9 Sept. 2026, https://www.tmz.com/2026/09/09/clay-matthews-explains-his-new-look/.
In 1967, Julia Roberts’ parents couldn’t afford the hospital bill for her birth, so Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King covered it.
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A popular internet story claims that Oscar-winning actor Julia Roberts’ family had an unusual relationship with Martin Luther King Jr. Snopes readers asked us to verify the story that the Kings paid the hospital bill for Roberts’ birth as a gift to her parents.
Martin Luther King Jr. footed the hospital bill for Julia Roberts’s birth in 1967 when her family was facing very tough financial times. Her parents were struggling to make ends meet and could not afford the medical costs, so the King family stepped in out of deep gratitude for Julia’s parents, who ran a small theater school in Atlanta and welcomed the King children when few other places would.
It is an incredible piece of history that shows how simple acts of kindness can bind people together across generations.
This story was confirmed by both Roberts and Bernice King, a daughter of the couple. In a September 2022 interview at an event hosted by A+E Networks and History Channel in Washington, D.C., Roberts recounted the connection to journalist Gayle King (no relation to MLK’s family):
KING: Let’s start with the day you were born. Who paid for your hospital bill?
ROBERTS: Okay, her research is very good. […] The King family paid for my hospital bills.
KING: Not my family!
ROBERTS: Not your family, but …
KING: Martin Luther King Jr. …
ROBERTS: … and Coretta.
KING: And how did that come about? […] Why did they do that? …
ROBERTS: Obviously, because my parents couldn’t pay for the hospital bill. My parents had a theater school in Atlanta called the Actors and Writers Workshop. One day, Coretta Scott King called my mother and asked if her kids could be part of the school because they were having a hard time finding a place that would accept her kids. My mom was like, “Sure, come on over,” and so they just all became friends and they helped us out of a jam.
KING: In the ’60s, you didn’t have little Black children interacting with little white kids in acting school. And your parents were like, “Come on in,” and I think that’s extraordinary, and it lays the groundwork for who you are.
A clip of the interview was shared on Twitter:
Bernice King later shared the clip and corroborated Roberts’ account, writing, “I know the story well, but it is moving for me to be reminded of my parents’ generosity and influence.”
Roberts’ parents, Walter and Betty Roberts, indeed ran a theater company, and the Kings’ other daughter, Yolanda King, who died in 2007, spoke publicly about attending classes there. Per a transcript of a 2001 CNN segment that profiled Roberts and included an interview with Yolanda King:
DARYN KAGAN: Today’s queen of Hollywood began life in modest surroundings, nearly a continent away, in Atlanta, Georgia. Julia Fiona Roberts debuted at Crawford Long Hospital on October 28, 1967. Julia went home to a two-story house in Midtown, one of Atlanta’s middle class neighborhood.
Her parents, Walter and Betty Roberts, ran a writing and actor’s workshop. The children of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., were enrolled there. It was the only integrated children’s theater group in Atlanta.
Dexter King is now a writer. Yolanda King, an actress and producer.
KING: Mr. Roberts was so imposing. I loved him, but I was also a little intimidated by him too. And — but he was — I mean, he taught me so much, and he and Mrs. Roberts, about the work, and just about living and being really open, grabbing life and making the best of it.
Yolanda King also described the school in a 1994 interview with the Los Angeles Times:
For example, since age 8 she’d been enrolled in what was then the only integrated drama school in Atlanta, run by Walt Roberts, father of actress Julia Roberts. But when she played in a teen-age production of “The Owl and the Pussycat” in 1972, she said, her hometown erupted.
“I was 15, my co-star was white, and the white community criticized it because they didn’t think (mixing the races) was right.
“The black community asked: ‘How could you disgrace your dead father’s image by playing the role of a prostitute?’”
The furor was so great that King said she was forced to stand up at church one Sunday and explain her actions to the whole congregation.
Author Phillip DePoy, another former student of the school, described in a 2013 essay how a member of the Ku Klux Klan once attempted to “make trouble” for the aspiring actors:
I kissed a girl, and 10 yards away a Buick exploded. I was on the back of a flatbed truck that had been converted into a swamp. I was a fox. The girl was a terrapin. We were in Atlanta, it was a very nice summer day in 1965, and I was 15 years old. The girl was Yolanda King, daughter of Coretta and Martin Luther King Jr. I was primarily Caucasian and Yolanda wasn’t. That’s what the trouble was about. I don’t know who owned the Buick, but I know who blew it up.
A man, a tangential member of the Ku Klux Klan, had seen me kiss Yolanda the day before in the same parking lot. She and I were members of a theatrical group called the Actors and Writers Workshop. It was run by Walter and Betty Roberts, the parents of Eric and Julia Roberts. Rob, as Walter was sometimes called, had written his theatrical version of a Joel Chandler Harris story, thanks in part to a Guggenheim grant for children’s theater. That’s why Yolanda and I were standing in a makeshift swamp on the back of a flatbed truck, dressed as a fox and a terrapin.
The Klansman had come around the day before the explosion in order to make trouble. The workshop was offering a free show in the Carver Homes housing project, an exclusively African-American wonderland filled with hammered lives and children with nothing to do. The guy only heckled us the first day, said words that everyone had heard a million times before, finished his case of PBR, and was about to leave when I kissed Yolanda.
The school eventually shuttered due to financial reasons. Walter and Betty Roberts divorced before his death in 1977, according to NPR.
Given that this story has been told over the years by Roberts and King’s children, one of whom recounted her experiences at the school, we rate this claim as true.
For further reading, Snopes has covered numerous rumors about Marting Luther King Jr.
In August 2026, a claim spread that McDonald’s lost a lawsuit against the TV chef Jamie Oliver, who — according to posts — proved that the fast food chain’s food was “unfit for human consumption” because it was “highly toxic.” The claim is unproven.
Snopes previously investigated a variation of this claim in 2018 and 2026. We found then and now that Oliver said in a 2011 TV program that beef trimmings used for a product he called “pink slime” were “not fit for human consumption.” We found no evidence that he specifically called McDonald’s food “unfit for human consumption” or “toxic,” as the posts suggested.
The American Meat Institute, a trade association that represents processors of meat and poultry, said in 2012 that beef trimmings used to make “pink slime,” which it calls Boneless Lean Beef Trimmings, were edible.
However, because we could not access a full version of the “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution” episode where Oliver discussed “pink slime” to see if he specifically mentioned McDonald’s, we leave this claim unrated.
Snopes will update this report if, or when, additional information surfaces. We contacted Oliver and McDonald’s to ask whether Oliver has ever called the fast food chain’s food “unfit for human consumption” or “toxic” or whether McDonald’s ever lost a lawsuit involving Oliver and are waiting for responses.
A claim (archived) circulated on Facebook in August 2026 that fast food chain McDonald’s lost a lawsuit against the TV chef Jamie Oliver after Oliver proved its food was “unfit for human consumption” because it was “highly toxic.”
For example, one Facebook user wrote:
McDonald’s loses lawsuit against chef Jamie Oliver, who proved that the food they sell is unfit for human consumption because it is highly toxic.
Chef Jamie Oliver won a lawsuit against the world’s largest fast-food chain. Oliver demonstrates how hamburgers are made.
According to Oliver, fatty cuts of meat are “washed” with ammonium hydroxide and then used to fill the hamburger patties. Even before this process, the TV presenter says, this meat was unfit for human consumption.
Oliver, a radical activist chef taking on the food industry, says: “We are talking about meat that is sold as dog food and then served to humans. Aside from the quality of the meat, ammonium hydroxide is harmful to health.” Oliver calls it “the pink slime process.” What sane person would put a piece of meat soaked in ammonium hydroxide into a child’s mouth?
The claim contained three parts: that McDonald’s sued Oliver, that Oliver made the comments about “pink slime” and that Oliver’s alleged comments were specifically about McDonald’s.
We found no evidence inonlinesearches (archived, archived, archived) that McDonald’s ever lost a lawsuit involving Oliver. AFP Fact Check reported in December 2021 that Oliver had never taken legal action against McDonald’s.
According to an excerpt of a 2011 episode of his program “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution,” Oliver said that the meat used to produce a specific type of beef product that the celebrity chef called “pink slime” was “not fit for human consumption.”
McDonalds reportedly ceased using “pink slime,” which is also known as Boneless Lean Beef Trimmings, in their food in 2011, as we noted in 2018 when we fact-checked a previous version of this claim. Oliver did not mention McDonald’s specifically in excerpts of the 2011 episode of “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution” that Snopes reviewed.
However, because we could not access a full version of the “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution” episode in question to see if it mentioned McDonald’s, we leave this claim unrated.
Snopes contacted Oliver and McDonald’s to ask whether McDonald’s ever lost a lawsuit involving Oliver, whether Oliver had ever proved McDonald’s food was “unfit for human consumption” or “toxic” and to ask whether McDonald’s used Select Lean Beef Trimmings in 2026. We await replies to our queries.
Oliver’s allegations
In the first episode of the second season of his program “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution,” in which Oliver attempted to reform school lunches and fight obesity in the U.S., the celebrity chef held a demonstration where he showed children and adults where on a cow different cuts of meat came from.
According to a segment of the episode (archived) that an internet user uploaded to YouTube in 2016, after spray-painting prices on a live cow to show where various cuts were found, Oliver then addressed what happened to the remainder of the animal.
He said (time code 00:01), “The public loved seeing that, that, equalling a steak. They never for a minute thought I would clear all the meat and cuts away and introduce them to a new world of food. It’s called pink slime.”
Oliver added (time code 00:12), “When you’ve broken down a whole beast, you’re left with trimmings. You know, in my industry, we call those trimmings [BLEEP].”
Speaking to a crowd of people, Oliver described the trimmings used for “pink slime” as (time code 00:36) “not fit for human consumption.”
Oliver went on to say that processing plants took trimmings that were “not fit for human consumption,” separated the meat from the fat, killed harmful bacteria using ammonium hydroxide and sold the end product, which he called “pink slime,” as human-grade food. Ammonium hydroxide is a watery solution that can be used to regulate acidity in food or in hair dye or cosmetics.
In an excerpt from the program included in a 2012 CBS report, Oliver said (time code 00:32), “We’re taking a product that would be sold at the cheapest form for dogs, and after this process we can give it to humans.”
(Snopes could not locate a complete video of the “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution” episode in question. The clips we have found online appeared genuine and did not indicate any signs of possible manipulation.)
FDA says ammonium hydroxide ‘generally safe’
Around 11 months after Oliver’s episode discussing “pink slime” aired, the American Meat Institute President J. Patrick Boyle issued a statement to say that Boneless Lean Beef Trimmings was “a safe, wholesome and nutritious form of beef” that helped prevent food waste by utilizing trimmings that would otherwise go to waste.
The institute is a trade association that represents processors of meat and poultry.
Boyle’s statement said, similarly to Oliver’s demonstration, that processing Boneless Lean Beef Trimmings involved first separating the meat from the fat and using “food grade ammonium hydroxide gas” to destroy bacteria before blending the product into foods like ground beef.
However, he denied claims that the trimmings used to create Boneless Lean Beef Trimmings were not edible. The statement said:
Some recent media reports created a troubling and inaccurate picture, particularly in their use of the colloquial term ‘pink slime.’ The fact is, BLBT is beef. The beef trimmings that are used to make BLBT are absolutely edible. In fact, no process can somehow make an inedible meat edible; it’s impossible. In reality, the BLBT production process simply removes fat and makes the remaining beef more lean and suited to a variety of beef products that satisfy consumers’ desire for leaner foods.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which regulates ammonium hydroxide use in food, says the ingredient is “generally recognized as safe.” This was also the case when we last reported on these claims in 2018.
In sum …
While Oliver did call the cuts of meat used for Boneless Lean Beef Trimmings “not fit for human consumption” and claimed (time code 00:59) the product was “admitted to being in at least 70% of ground beef products” in a 2011 program, the episode excerpts Snopes reviewed did not show him specifically accusing McDonald’s of using the product or calling the fast food chain’s products toxic.
McDonald’s said in a 2013 statement it had not used Boneless Lean Beef Trimmings in its products since 2011.
We found no evidence that McDonald’s had lost a lawsuit involving Oliver since then. Given the prominence of McDonald’s and Oliver, such a lawsuit would have been widely reported by reputable sources. That was not the case.
While the FDA generally recognizes ammonium hydroxide, which is used to process Boneless Lean Beef Trimmings, as safe, reporting by the publication Food Safety News claimed that fast food giants like McDonalds, Taco Bell and Burger King had all stopped using the product by January 2012.
Both ABC, which broadcast Oliver’s program, and Oliver himself have faced lawsuits over their coverage of the product.
ABC settled out of court in 2017 in a $1.9 billion defamation lawsuit brought by Beef Products Inc., a producer of Boneless Lean Beef Trimmings, over Oliver’s program and other stories the network had reported about the product in March and April 2012.
A man who Beef Products Inc. laid off after negative press heavily affected the company’s sales sued Oliver, ABC and other defendants in 2012. He dropped the case in 2013.
“Duane ‘Keffe D’ Davis Is Found Guilty in Tupac Shakur’s Murder, Three Decades after His Death .” CNN, 1 Sept. 2026, https://edition.cnn.com/2026/08/31/us/live-news/tupac-duane-davis-trial. Accessed 2 Sept. 2026.
Schneid, Rebecca. “30 Years After Tupac Shakur Was Killed, a Murder Trial Begins.” Time, 16 Aug. 2026. time.com, https://time.com/article/2026/08/16/30-years-after-tupac-shakur-was-killed-a-murder-trial-begins/. Accessed 2 Sept. 2026.
Disney bought country singer Dolly Parton’s Dollywood theme park.
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A rumor (archived) that Disney bought Dolly Parton’s Dollywood theme park circulated online after the beloved star’s death in August 2026.
The Mouse Trap News Instagram account shared news of the alleged takeover, writing, “What do you think of Disney taking over Dollywood?!”
(@mousetrapnews, accessed via Instagram)
The story also appeared on Mouse Trap News’ Facebook (archived) and TikTok (archived) accounts. Commenters across the platforms appeared to question whether the rumor was true. Snopes readers also contacted us to investigate its legitimacy.
The rumor about Disney buying Dollywood is not real. Mouse Trap News is a satirical news outlet covering the Disney parks. Profile descriptions on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok described the accounts’ output as “100% Fake.”
The outlet also posted a written story on its website, which describes its content as “100% made-up parody and satire stories about Disney Parks.” Therefore, we find this claim was labeled satire.
Search engines such as DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo did not find any credible reporting to suggest Disney had bought Dollywood (archived, archived, archived). Because of both Disney and Parton’s worldwide fame, reputable sources would have reported on such a takeover, if true.
Mouse Trap News shared the rumor on or around Aug. 28, 2026, three days after Parton’s death.
The video that Mouse Trap News posted on its social media profiles used a combination of footage of Dollywood and Disney parks, as well as unrelated clips from two authentic videos. Some clips came from a video of Parton speaking about the “My Life of Many Colors Museum,” which was set to open in the fall of 2026. Other clips came from a video of Dollywood Parks & Resorts President Eugene Naughton speaking about how the park would honor Parton’s legacy after her death.
Remembering Parton as the park’s “dreamer-in-chief,” Naughton told viewers:
I know a lot of people are concerned that things are going to change without Dolly being present here and I want to assure you that it’s not. Just know that we’re all going to keep her alive here.
For further reading, Snopes has previously debunked stories from Mouse Trap News. For example, in June 2025, we alerted readers to another satirical story about Disney banning MAGA hats.
