About

Bill Nye Died in a Balloon Accident refers to humorous social media posts that falsely claim that American television host and science communicator Bill Nye died some time ago in a hot air balloon accident. The posts reference a 2024 episode of the American television series Smiling Friends in which a fictional version of Bill Nye dies in such fashion.

Origin

On June 23rd, 2024, episode eight "Pim Finally Turns Green" of season two of the animated comedy series Smiling Friends premiered^[1] on Adult Swim. In the episode, protagonists Pim and Charlie call upon Bill Nye, the host of the Bill Nye the Science Guy science education television program, to gently introduce the concept of death to Rotten, a snowman character who is terrified of it. Bill Nye arrives on a hot air balloon, and, as he sings a song about death being natural for all living beings, accidentally crashes into power lines and dies (clip shown below).

Spread

Following the episode, jokes about the real-world Bill Nye having died in a hot air balloon accident gained popularity.

On June 25th, 2024, X^[2] / Twitter account @PopCrave reported that Bill Nye was going to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. On that day, X^[3][4] / Twitter user @AltHistCody and @nicolas_px both made jokes referencing the Smiling Friends episode, with the posts gaining over 5,800 reposts and 84,000 likes and 1,400 reposts and 26,000 likes, respectively, in five months (post by @AltHistCody shown below).

On July 18th, 2024, X^[5] user @Reecee_yt referenced fictional Bill Nye's death in the episode in a quote of another post about the presenter. The post (shown below) received over 3,300 reposts and 52,000 likes in four months.

Referencing Bill Nye's death in the episode became a recurring joke on X / Twitter in the following months, with users quoting posts about Bill Nye with comments about his supposed passing.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References