2025 Celebrity Still-Dead Pool

The Game Room
1

There’s the Celebrity Death Pool and the Celebrity Life Pool - perhaps you’ve participated in these and been disappointed, since you got few or no hits, while others who pile on with the easy picks always seem to rack up the points by doing the obvious, which takes no imagination.

This pool is for you. Pick 13 people who you are pretty sure are already dead and post your list here. Odds are 99.99993% that none of your picks will come back to life in the next year, making you a winner! Won’t that feel good?

Here’s my list for 2025:

Wacko Hurley
Earl Derr Biggers
Heliogabalus
Pixie Palladino
Oofty Goofty
Andy Kaufman
Doodles Weaver
Breece D’J Pancake
Generalissimo Francisco Franco*
Dorothy “Sloopy” Sloop
Leo G. Carroll
Choo Choo Justice
Vivian Stanshall
Odd Flattuma

*(All entries must include Franco. Tradition is important.)

You will be graded on originality of your picks. Odd or obscure or just plain funny choices are encouraged. Choose carefully. Don’t just post the first thirteen dead celebrities you can think of. People who died recently, like say Richard Simmons, will be judged harshly. Dead Beatles will prove you don’t care. You can enter anytime, no deadline, you can even enter a year from now if you want. Great for those who tend to procrastinate! Winner (possibly me) will be announced on January 1, 2026, if I make it to then.

2

Yul Brynner
Herman Hesse
Pope Hilarius
Mitch Hedberg
Generalissimo Francisco Franco
Sonny Bono
Yaphet Kotto
Richard Kiel
Ted Cassidy
Josef Stalin
Françous “Papa Doc” Duvalier
Gustave Flaubert
Sinclair Lewis

3

The Star Wars cinematic universe (Andor excluded).

4

NotherYinzer
Yul Brynner
Herman Hesse
Pope Hilarius
Mitch Hedberg
Generalissimo Francisco Franco
Sonny Bono
Yaphet Kotto
Richard Kiel
Ted Cassidy
Josef Stalin
Françous “Papa Doc” Duvalier
Gustave Flaubert
Sinclair Lewis

Good list. There might even be a theme here. Dictators, authors, bald guys, really tall men, Sonny Bono. I’m sure I see a pattern here. But no ladies? A dead sausage party. Put 'em on the hot dog cooker at 7-11 and watch 'em rotate.

Cervaise
The Star Wars cinematic universe (Andor excluded).

I’m not sure what to make of this. Will have to ask our panel of judges. Okay, panel say no. Try again.

5

At least Abe Vigoda is still alive.

6

It was around 3 a.m. when I wrote that list. I was up waiting for the dogs to come back in and I’m lucky I could count to 5, much less 13. I never realized I picked all guys. Oops.

7

S’okay. No oops about it. You do realize that women are dead too. For example, Katherine Hepburn. She’s dead. People don’t always think about that. Some kind of cultural bias I suppose. No knock on anyone who forgets. Don’t do it again.

8

How about a second list?

Amelia Earhart
Cleopatra
Pope Joan
Diana Rigg
Queen Elizabeth II
Marie Curie
Generalissimo Francisco Franco (just following the rules)
Eleanor Roosevelt
Golda Meir
Beverly Cleary
Phyllis Diller
Cloris Leachman
Persis Khambatta

9

At least we still have Bowie.

10

The all Spinal Tap list

Drummers
John “Stumpy” Pepys
Eric “Stumpy Joe” Childs
Peter “James” Bond
Mick Shrimpton
Joe “Mama” Besser
Richard “Ric” Shrimpton
Sammy “Stumpy” Bateman
Scott “Skippy” Scuffleton
Chris “Poppa” Cadeau

Tambourine player Billy Murgatroyd
Dan Taman on horns
Backup vocalist Andy Sutcliffe

And Francisco Franco as cultural censor

11

Considering that Franco has to be on the list, here’s one with him and 12 people who have been given an “opening credits” cast credit on Saturday Night Live:

Francisco Franco
George Coe
Michael “Mr. Mike” O’Donoghue
John Belushi
Gilda Radner
Charles “F-Bomb” Rocket
Gilbert Gottfried
Danitra Vance
Phil Hartman
Tony Rosato
Chris Farley
Jan Hooks
Norm Macdonald

“George Coe from Archer? When was he on SNL?” On just the first episode - The Version I Heard Was, he was there to play the father figure in sketches, as they weren’t sure if viewers would accept a sketch where, say, Chevy Chase or John Belushi played the father of Gilda Radner’s or Laraine Newman’s character. When they decided that Chase et al. could do it without any problem, they let Coe go.

12

And we’re off; the starting gun has fired a blank, if it were loaded it might have killed a celebrity by accident, one who might have been on someone’s list by mistake but the judges have conferred and decided that would count.

I would like to step in and repeat a special advantage this pool has over those other pools in that there’s no deadline to enter and you are more than welcome to submit your list at any time during 2025. I should not have to say this, but there seems to be a difficulty among some would-be players in telling the difference between actual dead people and fictitious people who never existed, thus cannot have died. That’s something I never expected, but will now take the opportunity to emphasize that there is a difference. If you are confused, let me know and I’ll attempt to clear up this baffling sticking point in words of one syllable.

I’d say we’re well on the way to making this THE event of the annual Dead-Alive season. So Tally-ho, and may the bestest be the deadest - I think it was Ian Fleming who said You Only Live Twice, and he has yet to be proven correct but I think I can say with great confidence that he never will be - Hatchie.

13

Yesterday it was reported that the world’s oldest living person had died.

But the world’s oldest living person is still alive. So…

14

I’ll do my bit for the old empire with this list, which I’ll call “Brits who liked to party”. I haven’t double-checked they’re all actually dead, that seems like too much work.

Freddie Mercury
HM Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother
Alex ‘Hurricane’ Higgins
Keith Moon
Winston Churchill
Brian Jones
Graham Chapman
Boudicca
Generalissimo Francisco Franco
George Best
Richard Burton
Sir Malcolm Sargent
Douglas Adams

15

I plumbed the depths of major league baseball’s archives for (most of) these dudes

Johnny “Ugly” Dickshot
Ledell “Cannonball” Titcomb
Tony Suck
Jack Glasscock
Cletus Elwood “Boots” Poffenberger
Orval Overall
General Francisco Franco
Charlie Furbush
Harry Budson “Bud” Weiser
Urban Shocker
Charles Manlove
Van Lingle Mungo
Dick Trickle

16

I suggest you not check then, because I certainly won’t.

17

Nitpick! Francisco Franco Bahamonde’s title was either Generalísimo (with accent on the “i” and only one “s”, there are no double esses in Spanish) or Caudillo de España por la Gracia de Dios.
So now my list, just starting, will be completed in due time:

Generalísimo Francisco Franco Bahamonde
Pope Benedict
Lucrecia Borgia
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher
Farrokh Bulsara, aka Freddie Mercury

tbc

18

The guy’s name was “Dickshot” and they nicknamed him “Ugly”? That’s just piling on.

19

Aw, I always get that wrong.

20

Happy Scrapple Dappy New Year! Pencils down!

Gotta say, this being the Inaugural Still-Dead Pool, it’s one to grow on. Meaning pariticipation in '25, though disappointingly punk, was nevetheless slapdash and halfhearted. But that only means there’s nowhere to go but up, and that’s what we’re aiming for in 2026, and with my genius “no deadline” codicil (because how could there be, all picks are already dead, some for centuries) we can nourish our little seed to a big, strong beanstalk with just a little bit of Miracle-Gro and a prayer. For instance, I am considering making the next Pool a “mandatory participation” one. Nobody wants to see that, so get your spouses, kids, parents, siblings, friends and neighbors to register at SDMB and let’s get out there and stuff that Ballot Box till it busts wide open!

I’ve been handed the list of winners for last year’s Pool. Surprisingly, I didn’t win, but let’s first see who the big losers were.

Bottom: anyone who tried to sneak Star Wars characters or other fictional low-lifes into the mix. No can do! I guess some of you don’t know what’s real and what isn’t, but like
Joe Pesci said, get the shovels and get in the fucking car.

Dead_Cat: It was a nice list of mediocrities and nonentities, but frankly wasn’t funny enough. I’m sure you can do better.

Reeses_Monkey (second all female-list) This was clearly a suck-up entry, after I choused you for first offering an all-boy list. I guess I should have specified no do-overs. Once you submit to me, it’s over. I don’t want to be like that ridiculous Death Pool which is larded with Alternates and poor beggars who want to change their entry right up to the eleventh hour. You think I’m going to indulge a bunch of pathetic sobsisters? Not happenin’.

That_Don_Guy: You did your best, and I thank you for it. I just don’t like people whose screen names include underscores (“_”).

Reeses_ Monkey (original list) It was a good one. I liked seeing “Papa Doc” in there, a very High Grade choice. Who has even thought about “Papa” for years? And Pope Hilarius made me smile. If that’s a not real person, I don’t care; he should be real.

Runner up: me. I spent a lot of time and effort rounding up this rogues’ gallery, and I hope you were duly impressed.

Winner: Moriarty. Ain’t America a great country? I don’t mean now, but when ball players named Dick Trickle and Cletus Elwood “Boots” Puffenharger walked the Earth. Giants, all of them. You may pick up your $10,000 prize tomorrow at 3 am in the parking lot behind the Waffle House in Knoxville TN; you’ve earned it.

Now get out of here, all of you.