The reason why there’s so many movies about zombies/the apocalypse/societal collapse is that it’s the filmmakers/government trying to get us ready for the actual idea of societal collapse which is coming SOON. The funny thing being I’ve been hearing about this since George W Bush and it’s followed every single other President.
True, there’s no ‘dirty words’ in the lyrics, but ironically the drummer did yell out ‘FUCK’ during the song, and nobody who listened intently trying to hear any dirty lyrics caught it. There’s a recording in the link below where you can hear the drummer yell out at the :54 mark, but I can’t tell it’s an F-bomb:
I don’t know if a 50+ year old commercial for kid’s cereal rises to the level of ‘showbiz’, but I just remembered the old urban myth that Mikey from the old Life cereal commercial had been widely rumored to have died from eating pop rocks and drinking soda pop until his stomach exploded (False, just for the record).
The alleged existence of snuff films must count as a weird showbiz theory:
I have my own CT. Yes, I admit, I am just asking questions…
Just after the events of 9/11, the show 24 debuted. I believe* that the show’s real purpose was not entertainment, but the get Americans used to thinking “the ends justify the means”, and “might makes right”, and “You’re either with us or against us” and “if I don’t chop off this child’s head MILLIONS OF PEOPLE WILL DIE!!”, and all sort of violent ideology/ideation.
This was to coarsen American thoughts, get us ready for a perpetual state of war against…somebody. Muslims, liberals, Jews…they were just making us ready.
It continued with later shows were the cops are killers and the reason is we Must Be Kept Safe at ALL COSTS. Our good guys have to be badder than the bad guys, by any means necessary. We must be armed and ready for whatever shit goes down. Shoot first if threatened. Better wrong than dead. Stand your ground.
And, the bad part of my theory: it worked.
*for varying degrees of “believe”
You’d think that diverse group would have trouble working together.
This has never been proven beyond circumstantial evidence so I think it qualifies for this thread but there is a story in Geek fandom that J. Michael Straczynski gave his Babylon 5 script to the owners of Star Trek (which I think was Paramount at the time but honestly I forget) to see if they would produce it and they rejected it but then shortly after announced Deep Space 9.
I remember in my teens and 20s hearing that those 80s and 90s “very special episodes” of tv shows were usually paid for by the government as “sneaky psa-s” to further agendas about drugs, child SA and other issues.
It was presented as just a conspiracy theory…but later found out it was largely true. I don’t know if it was always public knowledge and just dumb youth trying to make it a secret thing only we were cool enough to have figured out.
I came on to post this. Definitely the gold standard for bonkers showbiz conspiracies IMO.
There is also Q-Anon the most utterly bonkers and literally insane conspiracy theory (though now basically GOP orthodoxy 
). Its is closely linked to Hollywood,
Including weirdly an obscure 1996 Jeff Bridges sailing-based drama, White Squall, which is allegedly full of symbolism highlighting all the salient details of the Q-Anon conspiracy 
And the CIA funded the cartoon version of ‘Animal Farm’ to make us all hate communists. That one turned out to be true as well.
Similar stories about Jerry Mathers (The Beave), Tony Dow (his brother Wally), the kid from The Courtship of Eddie’s Father being drafted, sent to Vietnam, and dying there. Same thing was said about other actors including John Gilchrist (Mikey). The Fall of Saigon ending US involvement in Vietnam occurred in 1975 so Mathers and Dow were old enough that conceivably could have happened to them but Cruz would have been 13 and Gilchrist 7 in 1975. This is was story that could be recycled to use any young actor.
I remember a rumor that Mr. Rogers was a Vietnam sniper.
The counter to the Paul is Dead conspiracy is the Elvis is Alive conspiracy. Bill Bixby made no less than two TV specials about it in the 1990’s. Currently, there is an Arkansas preacher who legions of deluded Internet sleuths think is Elvis.
Of all the people who might be imagined to be “really still alive”, why Elvis Presley?
And he wore sweaters to cover up his sleeve tattoos.
It’s been rumored that child actor Josh Saviano (Paul Pfeiffer from The Wonder Years) grew up to be Marilyn Manson.
Yeah this is possibly the original weird showbiz conspiracy. Its synomous with weird showbiz conspiracy like “watergate” is for political scandal. Or maybe it was, I’ve not heard of it recently (so many other bonkers conspiracies more recently have made it seem pretty pedestrian and run of the mill 
)
There have been others since then, Tupac come to mind.
I, of course, do not have the issue in question, but remember that as well.
There was also a theory that the actor who portrayed Eddie Haskell became noted porn star Johnny Wadd. This one was taken so seriously that he offered to drop trou in order to disprove it.
Britney Spears’s “Oops!… I Did It Again” was a cover of a Louis Armstrong original.
Unfortunately the original page from ~2008 has been changed (it was pretty funny), but the ‘original’ audio is still there:
I didn’t actually think this was a real CT, but it seems to have grown enough legs to warrant a Snopes article: