The Revenant Bear Rape Rumor

About

The Revenant Bear Rape Rumor refers to false claims that the protagonist Hugh Glass (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) is brutally raped by a bear during a scene in the 2015 Western adventure film The Revenant. The rumor was widely circulated online after being mistakenly reported by the news aggregation website The Drudge Report.

Origin

On December 1st, 2015, The Drudge Report^[1] published an article reporting that a wild bear is shown raping Leonardo DiCaprio in the upcoming film The Revenant.

"The bear flips Leo over and thrusts and thrusts during the explicit mauling. 'He is raped -- twice!' Not to be outdone, DiCaprio rips open a horse and sleeps naked in its carcass!"

Spread

The same day, Entertainment Weekly^[4] quoted a Fox Studios spokesperson who claimed the bear in the scene was a female protecting her cubs and that "there is clearly no rape scene with the a bear." Meanwhile, the TomoNews US YouTube channel uploaded a video about the rumors titled "Bear rape movie?" (shown below, left). Also on December 1st, 2015, YouTube Kenneth Webster posted an narrated video in which DiCaprio is viciously raped by a bear in a parody of the 1997 romantic disaster film Titanic (shown below, right).

On December 17th, E! Online^[3] published an interview with DiCaprio, in which he called the rumors about the bear rape scene "absurd" (shown below).

"I have no idea where these ridiculous things come from, and what you do when you hear stuff like that? It's absurd. It's absurd."

On December 21st, The Daily Mail^[2] published an article titled "Leonardo DiCaprio describes filming THAT 'bear rape' scene in graphic new movie The Revenant", which satirically quoted an ABC interview with DiCaprio about the scene:

"You can feel the intimacy of both man and beast, you feel the sweat and the heat coming off the animal."

The following day, Gawker^[5] posted a clip of the scene that Matt Drudge purportedly mistook for a bear rape sequence. On January 14th, 2016, the film blog The Shiznit^[6] posted several parody movie posters for 2016 Oscar nominees, which included a poster for The Revenant with the caption "Fucked by a bear: the Leonardo DiCaprio Story" (shown below).

Search Interest

External References