The Walking Dead Finale: Three Popular Hoaxes Circulating Online

It's t-minus about 80 hours until the fourth season of AMC's The Walking Dead wraps its run, and fans everywhere are thinking they know what's coming. Possibly because they've been told on the Internet that the theory of the day is a sure thing...but it's probably not. Why? Becuase for every credible spoiler out there, there are a dozen people trying to get attention by either intentionally spreading false information or by circulating their own theories as fact.  It happens a lot with shows which, like The Walking Dead, combine high-takes cliffhangers with big ratings. This season, though, seems crazier than usual. Here's some of the greatest hits circulating this week:

Misrepresented character "deaths" We already talked about this one once, but it's worth mentioning again because it's so pervasive. A quick trip to The Walking Dead's subreddit or any message board will yield somebody talking about Emily Kinney's appearance on The Following, during which her character was graphically killed and imaegs of the death posted online. Either the original poster, or someone immediately thereafter, incorrectly attributed the images to The Walking Dead and a fair number of people, assuming Beth's disappearance will loom large in the season finale, have taken the bait. This isn't the first time something like this has happened; last year, rumors were circulating that Daryl Dixon would be killed on the show, based in part on a photograph of a disemboweled Norman Reedus from the movie Pandorum. A tangential, but not identical, claim that's been everywhere this week is that Mary at Terminus is wearing Beth's sweater. It doesn't match the one Beth was wearing when she was abducted, though, and since her few remaining possessions were in a bag she left behind when the car grabbed her, it's not like she's carrying a change of clothes that Mary could have decided she liked better. Here's Beth, as seen just moments before her abduction at the funeral home:

Here is Mary, shortly after Glenn, Maggie and their companions arrived at Terminus:

James Roday killed Carl! At the start of last night's Psych AfterPshow, Psych star James Roday walked out, took his seat and said, ""I can't believe they killed Carl! He was just a kid! Why would they do that?!" Given that anyone with actual inside information would have been under a gag order until the season finale, it seemed pretty clear at the time that Roday was just joking, having a little fun with both the live format and the fact that Psych had never done a Talking Dead-style aftershow before last night. That said, it managed to startle a few fans, and on more than one forum for The Walking Dead there are variations on the "Was Roday serious?" posts. As someone who's spoken with Roday a couple of times (including once where The Walking Dead came up), let me assure you that if he had inside information like that, he wouldn't say it on live TV. And it's unlikely that he does to start with. The Fake Synopsis Just at the moment, there are a minimum of five widely-circulating stories purporting to be a legitimate plot synopsis of The Walking Dead's Season Four finale. As far as we know, none of them are accurate. Almost all of them revolve around the death of Beth at the hands of cannibals, with a popular variation being that someone finds her head somewhere within the walls of Terminus. This makes sense, in that most fans believe Terminus to be the home of The Hunters from the comics, and Gareth appears to be recreating a sequence from the comics featuring the Hunters' leader Chris in a sequence where he's been spotted in some of the foreign TV spots for this weekend's episode. That the episode seems to center on two separate conflicts -- one during the daytime at Terminus and one at night, which at least begins while Rick, Carl and Michonne are on the road -- many fans have looked at all the available promotional material and are convinced that they've got a handle on the episode.  That has left the market for fan fiction wide open, since people who think they have it figured out are eager to say "I told you so." Among the various synopses we've seen already, one popular recurring motif is that Rick kills Daryl before realizing who he is while the marauders Daryl is traveling with are fighting with Rick, Carl and Michonne. That seems particularly unlikely, but another synopsis that has Daryl accidentally killing Rosita for similar reasons seems almost as silly. That one ends with Carol bitten by a reanimated survivor and the group telling her not to worry -- that she'll be okay. So...probably not legit.